Recently a debate on ‘Assisted Dying’ took place in Westminster Hall in response to a petition to Parliament (e-petition 653593). The wording of this petition was as follows:
‘This petition calls for the Government to allocate Parliamentary time for assisted dying to be fully debated within the House of Commons and to provide MPs a vote on the difficulty. Terminally ailing people who find themselves mentally sound and near the tip of their lives mustn’t suffer unbearably against their will.
‘We imagine dying people within the UK must have the choice of requesting medical assistance to finish their lives with dignity, through a protected and compassionate system with strict eligibility criteria and safeguards. Without this, too many are taking matters into their very own hands with tragic consequences. The Daily Express and Dignity in Dying support Dame Esther Rantzen’s call for a free vote. The time has come to Give Us Our Last Rights.’
Although the talk didn’t end with a vote and the present government is neutral on whether there ought to be a change in the present law on the matter the undeniable fact that the talk was held is indicative of the continuing pressure on the UK to follow other jurisdictions corresponding to the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada in legalising the practice of ‘assisted dying.’
In excited about the proposal to legalise ‘assisted dying’ from a Christian perspective there are two preliminary points that must be noted.
The first is that the term ‘assisted dying’ is a misnomer. This is some extent that’s helpfully made by Nigel Biggar in his book What’s Wrong with Rights?. Commenting on the language of ‘physician assisted dying’ utilized by the Canadian Supreme Court, Biggar writes that this language:
‘….obscures the undeniable fact that what’s under discussion is the legal permissibility of medical patients being given assistance to bring an end to their suffering by intentionally killing themselves or by having another person kill them upon request. Intentional self-killing is what we call ‘suicide’ and intentional killing ‘homicide,’ because that’s what the words literally mean. Whether or not assistance in killing oneself and killing another person upon request are morally right, they’re distinct from assistance in passive dying. Otherwise often known as palliative care, that’s where a patient is given comfort and pain relief within the strategy of dying.’
As Biggar further notes:
‘It is true that there are cases where palliative treatment can increase the probability of dying, and so has the effect of hastening death. Nevertheless, it’s a standard place of human experience that we cause things we don’t intend. And sometimes no less than there may be a crucial moral and legal distinction between effects that we cause intentionally, effects we risk but don’t intend, and effects we cause by accident. It matters whether I intended to kill you, or merely risked your life, or killed you by accident. The presence or absence of intention alone may not finally determine the moral or legal status of my motion, however it is nevertheless a crucial factor. This is obscured by the selection to explain assistance in intentionally killing oneself and being killed upon request as ‘assistance in dying.’ The query before the court was not simply concerning the legal permissibility of giving help to the dying, but moderately about whether or to not enshrine in law the duty of healthcare professionals to help patients to commit suicide or to kill them at their request.’
What Biggar says in these two quotes highlights the undeniable fact that we’d like to desert the language of legalising ‘assisted dying.’ Assisting someone to die as painlessly and peacefully as possible is just not against the law and never has been (or else the entire hospice movement would have been illegal). What we’re talking about is intentionally killing someone. This is likely to be done legally but without their agreement (as happened in Nazi Germany) by which case we’re talking about execution (even when, just like the Nazis, we speak about euthanasia). Alternatively, it is likely to be done with their agreement, by which case we’re talking about suicide, because it is a case of somebody requesting help to kill themselves.
Since, fortunately, we’ve not reached the stage where anyone is arguing for many who are considered unfit to live to be executed (even in the event that they are innocent of any wrongdoing) what we’re talking about is legalising the assisting of suicide.
The second preliminary point that should be noted is that the argument that’s now most used against legalising assisted suicide is the ‘slippery slope’ argument that it’s going to put pressure on vulnerable people to finish their lives after they wouldn’t otherwise have done so.
This point is stressed by the disabled actress and disability rights campaigner Liz Carr in her latest documentary Better Off Dead by which she argues against a change in the present law. As the BBC news website explains: ‘Carr is afraid that changing the law for terminally ailing people could eventually end in those that are poor, disabled or mentally ailing being allowed to have an assisted death within the UK – and even feeling compelled to achieve this.’
The actress says the likelihood is ‘terrifying.’
She points to Canada where the law was modified in 2016 to permit those whose death was ‘reasonably foreseeable’ to have an assisted death, after which modified again in 2021 to incorporate those with a medical condition who were ‘suffering unbearably.’
The article also quotes the words of the palliative care specialist Dr Katherine Sleeman who, it says, ‘is anxious for individuals who may feel they’re a burden to their families.’
‘Patients will say to me: “I don’t need to go to a care home really, but I do know my family want me to do it and I do know it’s going to be easier for them, so I feel I’m going to say yes,”‘ Dr Sleeman explains.
‘Substitute the words “go to a care home” with “have an assisted death” and I feel it’s a very different picture.’
The specialist believes no assisted dying law may be completely protected, and that some individuals who don’t really need to die will at all times ‘slip through the online.’
These points made by Carr and Sleeman are very powerful and are supported by the experience of all of the countries by which assisted suicide has been legalised, not simply Canada. The evidence suggests that a ‘slippery slope’ is just not only a possibility, but practically inevitable.
However, let’s assume, hypothetically, that a law was introduced on this country to legalise assisted suicide but was so framed and enforced that a ‘slippery slope’ was avoided, and the one individuals who died were individuals who truly and freely desired to die. Would such a law be acceptable from a Christian standpoint?
I’d argue that the reply still must be ‘no.’ This is because suicide as such is morally impermissible, even whether it is freely chosen. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, it’s because suicide contravenes the love that one must have for God as one’s creator, for oneself as God’s creation and for one’s neighbours by breaking the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (Exodus 20:13). To quote the Catechism:
‘Everyone is liable for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who stays the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to simply accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honour and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is just not ours to eliminate.
‘Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbour since it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we proceed to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to like for the living God.’
The consequence, argues the Catechism, is that ‘… an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death with the intention to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect because of the living God, his Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith doesn’t change the character of this murderous act, which should be forbidden and excluded’ (Para 2277).
The position taken by the Catechism could seem a really hard line, however it is the position that the Christian Church as an entire has taken throughout its history. Thus, Augustine writes in The City of God that ‘we take the command “You shall not kill” as applying to human beings, that’s, other individuals and oneself. For to kill oneself is to kill a human being.’ This position also makes good theological sense. God has given our life on this earth as a present to us and thru us to our neighbours. It is just not morally right to reject this gift. As the Catechism says, contrary to the fashionable secular concept that ‘my life is my very own’, because of this our life ‘is just not ours to eliminate.’
Because assisted suicide must thus be thought to be a breach of the sixth commandment, Christians are under an obligation to refuse to interact in it themselves, and to refuse to assist other people to perform it, in the identical way that they might refuse to interact in other acts of unjustified killing. In addition, they have to do what they’ll to forestall it happening, which suggests not simply declaring that it’s mistaken, or attempting to be sure that it stays illegal, but compassionately helping people tempted to interact in it to grasp that it is just not essential because God’s command to go on living, nevertheless hard it might subjectively seem, is a greater alternative. As human beings we’re never ready by which we are able to rightly second guess God.
