What is in Kelvin's Head?

Presumed Consent

03/07/2013

Last night the Welsh Assembly agreed a new policy of presumed consent with regard to organ donation. Now, instead of opting to become an organ donor, in Wales it will be presumed that a person is willing to donate their organs after death, unless they have opted out.

I find this one an incredibly tough call, but I think that the Welsh Assembly is wrong. I’m opposed to presumed consent. I think it is wrong.

And yet I’m in favour of organ donation. I am on the register of organ donors. I recently had to renew my driving license and happily ticked the box indicating that I would be happy to consent to my organs being used to give life to someone else after I die.

My problem with presumed consent is that I have a problem with presumed anything. The dominant discourse in medical ethics hitherto has been around the the notion of informed consent. Presumed consent undermines this significantly. It also changes the relationship between the state and the individual in a way that makes me feel very uncomfortable.

It seems to me that the gift of organs after one has died is one of the greatest gifts that can be made. This legislation takes away from that sense of giftedness.

I’m opposed on pastoral grounds too. For many relatives the idea that they can consent to the donation of healthy organs from someone who is at the point of death is a wonderful and powerful thing. If the decision is no longer theirs then something has gone which has mattered to many.

If I needed an organ donation then I’ve no doubt I would long for anything that made more organs available. However, if I ask myself whether I would want to receive an organ from someone without knowing whether or not they wanted that procedure to happen I find myself having to think long and hard. Would I want an organ from someone who’s relatives were opposed to the organ removal? Organ donation can currently help people’s grieving processes. It now has the potential to complicate grief immesurably for some.

People often don’t know what it will feel like when someone dies. The ability to make decisions at that time is crucial. Removing the possibility of decision making concerns me greatly. Some urgently want whatever good that can come from a death to come to pass. However others don’t want a body to be touched more th an is necessary either. I’ve no doubt that some will see this as a violation and the way that they will cope with the death in those circumstances is entirely unknown to us but cannot be easy.

We are not simply flesh that the state owns and from which it can harvest. Somehow I can’t get away from the idea that we are more than that and that our laws should recognise that.

I’m not really aware of how the debate about this has gone in Wales. I’ve been paying attention to other moral discussions here recently. These are just my initial instictive reactions to news reports today.

As I said at the outset, I don’t find that a comfortable position to come to or to articulate. However, uncomfortable decisions are precisely what life makes us make.

What do you think?

Consent, organ donation, presumend consent, Wales

11 responses to “We should be wary of declaring martyrs”

Eamonn

08/04/2015

Agree totally. I find myself in a comparable position vis-à-vis the mass canonisations of the ‘martyrs’ of the Spanish Civil War, which assume that all those worthy of commemoration were on the same side.

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Michael Russell

08/04/2015

Anyone killed for professing their faith is a martyr. ISIS is an equal opportunity martyring machine. The various faith communities targeted, including Islamic ones, should build common ground to dismember ISIS. I simply fail to see the point in quibbling about who is a real martyr and who is not.

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1. Kelvin
  
  08/04/2015
  
  Is it your view that someone is a martyr for Christianity because they cannot recite a verse from the Qur’an?
  
  It seems to me that whilst some men and women of violence are being claimed to be martyrs if they should be shot by law enforcement agencies whilst pursuing paths of terror that there’s a huge amount to be gained by determining who is a martyr and who isn’t.
  
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  1. Bro David
    
    08/04/2015
    
    Not being able to explain a quranic verse was merely a way of discerning if someone was not Muslim. However, is it not just as great a presumption to think they weren’t martyrs, as to think that they were.
    
    The early church seemed to accept that all who were crucified or sent to the lions for their Christianity were martyrs. Perhaps not all did so as a statement of faith, but were nominal Christians caught up with the rest. But the church didn’t seem obliged to footnote who didn’t qualify.
    
    I’m not sure that I understand why your are hesitant. It seems a quibble. I don’t think anyone is leaning toward canonization here, just speaking of them as a whole.
    
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Jo

08/04/2015

The SEC still keeps the feast of Charles, King and Martyr. I don’t think we get to be too narrow in defining who is or isn’t a martyr.

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1. Kelvin
  
  09/04/2015
  
  Actually, Jo – that’s not quite right. The SEC keeps the commemoration of “Charles I, King, 1649”
  
  There’s no mention of him being a martyr in the calendar (and the current calendar superseded and replaced the one in the prayer book). There are plenty of people who are named as martyrs such as Agnes the week before Charles or indeed “Charles Mackenzie of Central Africa, Bishop, Missionary, Martyr, 1862” the very day after Charles.
  
  It would appear that rather careful thought was given to whether to describe Charles as a martyr and though he is included in the calendar (not least for founding one of our dioceses) any notion of martyrdom is absent.
  
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  1. Jo
    
    09/04/2015
    
    Thanks for the correction, I hadn’t realised there was that detail of difference between the SEC and CofE.
    
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Father David

10/04/2015

Of course, King Charles was a Martyr and is commemorated as such on January 31st each year. The trouble is that Anglicans have no real mechanism for declaring people to be saints or martyrs. Having referred to two recent horrific incidents on the African continent where Christians were slaughtered simply for being Christians, I wonder what the Provost of Glasgow thinks about the Ugandan Martyrs of the 19th century and would you personally regard them to be martyrs? As you know 23 Anglicans and 22 Roman Catholics were killed by the Kabaka for refusing to submit to King Mwanga’s corporal intimacies. The Roman Catholics were beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1964 but what of our Anglican Ugandan brothers – where they equally to be regarded as martyrs, or would you deny them that honorific title?

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1. Kelvin
  
  10/04/2015
  
  The Scottish Episcopal Calendar is again very clear: “Charles Lwanga and his companions, 1886, Janani Luwum, Bishop, 1977, Martyrs of Uganda”
  
  I have no idea why anyone would say that the SEC has no means of declaring someone to be a martyr. Not only do we have such a mechanism, we use it.
  
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Father David

10/04/2015

It would be interesting to know how this mechanism works in the SEC in deciding who is eligible to join the noble army of martyrs? Bishop Edward King of Lincoln is widely regarded as a saint South of the Border. I think it was Archbishop Lang who was asked how it was decided that Bishop King had reached sainthood status and the answer was that he was given a Collect, Epistle and Gospel to commemorate his saint’s day – 8th March, the day of his Heavenly Birthday.

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Harry Campbell

19/04/2015

“We strongly condemn such atrocities, whether they are Ethiopians are not,” the Ethiopian communications minister Redwan Hussein told AFP.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/19/isis-video-purports-to-show-massacre-of-two-groups-of-ethiopian-christians

What a shame the Archbishop couldn’t have said something similarly inclusive about the victims of the Kenyan massacre, and all such massacres, without caring about what their religion affiliation may or may not have been.

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