Legalising assisted suicide shall be ‘an enormous step backwards’

Christians have continued to react with disappointment after MPs voted in favour legalising assisted suicide.

MPs voted 330 to 275 in support of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill after a five-hour debate within the Commons on Friday. The bill now faces further parliamentary scrutiny before it may possibly turn out to be law.

Ross Hendry, CEO of Christian Action Research and Education (CARE), said the result was “deeply troubling”, and that vulnerable and marginalised people in England and Wales “are afraid of a change within the law”.

He dismissed promised safeguards saying there was “no such thing as a ‘protected’ assisted suicide law”.

“Legalising assisted suicide would diminish the worth we ascribe to human life in our laws and our institutions and create a two-tier society where suicide prevention doesn’t extend to all people. This could be an ethical failure, and an enormous step backwards,” he said. 

“As with other assisted suicide Bills up to now, there aren’t any safeguards on this Bill that can rule out coercion of vulnerable people, and other people ending their lives because they feel like a burden or lack proper support. There isn’t any such thing as a ‘protected’ assisted suicide law.

“Parliament does have a responsibility to construct higher support for individuals who are dying but not through this dangerous Bill. We need a national conversation on how we ensure excellent, universally accessible end-of-life and palliative care, and stronger support for marginalised groups.” 

He ended by calling on parliamentarians to give attention to improvements to palliative care, and reject the “dangerous and disproven” campaign for assisted suicide. 

Apologist David Robertson said “there shall be enormous pressure on the elderly to ‘do the correct thing’ and save the NHS” or “save their inheritance for the children”. 

Leadbeater has promised “essentially the most robust and strongest set of safeguards and protections on the earth”, with sign-off requiring the approval of two doctors and a High Court judge. 

Critics remain unpersuaded, though, and Robertson warned that after the law is passed “it can be added to and expanded”.

The Family Education Trust has warned of a “slippery slope”.

“Given the important thing context of the ‘epidemic of elder abuse across the UK’ … introducing such a law here in Britain must be deeply concerning,” it said in a recent position paper on assisted suicide. 

“Just as nothing within the two-doctor model enables proper diagnosis of depression, so the identical constraints of doctor training or time with the patient prevent realistic detection of the more subtle pressures on a person to finish their very own life by unscrupulous family and supposed friends, or manipulation into premature death. 

“If we have now a ‘right to die’, how could it make sense to limit it to anyone cohort of suffering people? Once you set the precedent of medicalised killing, there aren’t any rational grounds to limit it.”