Slaves of fake morals

What I read

According to "Noel Conway: Terminally-ill man loses assisted dying challenge" (2018), arguing that it was not theirs but the job of elected politicians in parliament to change the law, judges of England's Court of Appeal rejected a legal challenge from the increasingly paralysed Noel Conway, who wants to be allowed to ask his doctors to kill him in England without fear of criminal prosecution for doing what he has decided is best after careful consideration. According to the report, the judges also argued that Mr. Conway's proposed challenge to existing English law was not strong enough to protect others from abuse and that it did not respect "the sanctity of life." 

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My response 

Like most things that are interesting to write about, euthanasia, or voluntary death by assisted suicide, is controversial and important. I agree with Conway that he should be allowed to tell his doctors to kill him. There is little doubt that this is his well-considered opinion, which I think should be respected. It might be reasonable to try to stop people committing suicide because of a sudden depression or disaster in their lives: those impulses are likely to be short-term, and the person might  be glad the next day that they are still alive, but this not the case with many people who are sick and whose lives are constant misery. It seems to me that in such cases, it can be sensible to choose to end a life that is not worth living to the person living that life. For the government to make up laws against this personal right means that the government thinks it has more rights over a citizen's life than that citizen has. In other words, the  state thinks it owns the citizens, who are its property to keep alive or not: the correct word to describe this is slavery. The UK government and other states that have laws that ban assisted suicide treat their citizens as slaves owned by the government, and that profoundly disrespects their people, who are denied freedom to choose their own life and death. 

I think the reason for these morally bad laws is suggested in the judges phrase that I quoted: "the sanctity of life." This is an idea from religion, and religion is not a good guide to moral right or wrong. Religion, specifically the Christian religion but perhaps also others (I don't know them well enough to comment), taught people to kill witches, and to kill people who disagree with its teachings, and other evils. Religion is also the source of all holy wars. And religion has long been used by political players to stir up unreasoning hatred of some groups in society. The obvious example today is the anti-Muslim hatred that Buddhist monks in Myanmar incite, but Buddhist monks in Thailand have also been guilty of similarly immoral teachings, even telling followers that it was "no sin to kill communists" in the military-ruled 1970s (AFP, 2018). 

Another problem I see in the phrase "the sanctity of life" is that it's not clear what this even means. If it means all life is sacred, then that applies equally to the animals we kill to eat as much as it does to human life. And if it applies only to human life, it leaves unanswered the question of what is so very different about human life compared to the lives of rabbits, roses, pigs and peas, all of whom are our relatives in the family of living things on Earth, along with every other living thing, including the mosquitoes and bacteria that make us sick. 

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My question

Is there something uniquely special about human life that makes us totally different to other living things?  

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Reference

• AFP. (2018, March 12). Rise of violent Buddhist rhetoric in Asia defies stereotypes. The Bangkok Post. Retrieved from https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/1426722/rise-of-violent-buddhist-rhetoric-in-asia-defies-stereotypes
   
• Noel Conway: Terminally-ill man loses assisted dying challenge. (2018, June 27). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-shropshire-44628459