EIGHT bishops have joined greater than 100 women of various faiths in signing an open letter that claims that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill “could create a latest tool to harm vulnerable women”.
The Bill, which seeks to legalise assisted dying, has accomplished the Committee Stage, and is resulting from return to the House of Commons on 25 April for the Report Stage (Leader comment, 4 April)
The letter, published on the web site of the think tank Theos on Sunday, is signed by 112 women, who include the Bishops of London, Gloucester, Stepney, Dover, Lancaster, Bristol, Croydon, and Aston. Among the opposite signatories are the director of Theos, Chine McDonald; the Assistant Secretary General, Muslim Council of Britain, Dr Naomi Green; the President of the Catholic Union of Great Britain, Baroness Hollins; and the chief executive of Jewish Women’s Aid, Sam Clifford.
The letter says that the Bill “has insufficient safeguards to guard a few of the most marginalised in society, particularly women subjected to gender-based violence, and abuse by a partner, who also experience intersecting barriers to a full and secure life”.
It continues: “We are concerned that the proposed laws could create a latest tool to harm vulnerable women, particularly those being subjected to domestic abuse and coercive control, by helping them to finish their lives.”
The letter refers to a report published last month by the Domestic Homicide Project, which found that, for the second yr running, the variety of domestic abuse victims who died by suicide in England and Wales was higher than the number of individuals killed by an abusive partner.
Furthermore, the letter says, domestic abuse victims who’re also women of religion “can face a selected type of abuse by the hands of their perpetrators, who may weaponise theologies and culture to harm and control their victims.
“We are concerned that the assisted dying laws, because it stands, fails to take account of how faith and its role at the top of life, in addition to its use by each perpetrators and the ladies they abuse, create complex dynamics that may result in vulnerable women, who can also hold strong religious beliefs, seeing no way out but death.”
The letter identifies “poverty and other inequalities” that “increase the danger of ladies and girls being subjected to violence, in poor health health and the standard of care and support they receive from statutory institutions and civil society”. The voices of “women who’re from Black and minoritised communities, disabled women, migrant women and working-class women”, are “absent from conversations about this Bill”, the letter says.
The letter concludes: “If assisted dying is seen as a response to alleviate suffering, without addressing the underlying structural issues that make life difficult and safeguard against harm, it could put undue pressure on vulnerable women to decide on death over inadequate care.
“This isn’t any technique to legislate, especially not on matters of life and death. We have serious concerns in regards to the bill and its lack of safeguards. The bill has an excessive amount of potential to harm vulnerable people and so we’re uniting as women from across faith traditions to talk up for vulnerable women, including victims of violence against women and girls, and disabled women, and lift our concerns publicly.”
The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, in a pastoral letter last week, asked Roman Catholics to induce their MPs to vote against the Bill.
“There are serious reasons for doing so,” he wrote. “At this point we wish not simply to restate our objections in principle, but to stress the deeply flawed process undergone in Parliament up to now.”
The Bill would, he said, “fundamentally change lots of the key relationships in our lifestyle”, reminiscent of those inside the family, between doctors and patients, and inside the NHS. “Yet there was no Royal Commission or independent inquiry ahead of its presentation. It is a Private Member’s Bill.”
MPs had had insufficient time to debate the Bill before they voted for it at Second Reading, he said, and the Committee that examined it “took only three days of evidence: not all voices were heard, and it comprises an undue variety of supporters of the Bill. In short, this isn’t any technique to legislate on such a vital and morally complex issue.”
A consequence of this “flawed process” had been that “many vital questions remain unanswered”, he wrote.
