As MPs prepare to think about legalising assisted suicide, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned of a “slippery slope”.
Archbishop Justin Welby was speaking ahead of Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private members’ bill being formally introduced to the House of Commons Wednesday.
“I believe this approach is each dangerous and sets us in a direction which is much more dangerous, and in every other place where it has been done, has led to a slippery slope,” he told the BBC.
Assisted suicide is legal within the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia and 11 US states.
Opponents of legalising assisted suicide point to examples like Canada where restrictions have been relaxed through the years from terminal illness to including serious or chronic health conditions that aren’t life threatening, and plans to expand the laws again to incorporate mental health conditions. Both Belgium and the Netherlands allow assisted suicide for minors.
The Archbishop spoke of his a long time of experience as a priest sitting with people wishing their sick family members would pass in order that their suffering would end. He said he didn’t want people to feel guilty for feeling that way and admitted to having similar thoughts as a teen when his own father was in poor health. But he warned against harmful consequences of fixing the law.
Recalling his own mother’s feelings of being a “burden” before she passed away last yr on the age of 93, he shared his fear that others might feel pressured into asking for assisted suicide.
“What I’m saying is that introducing this laws opens the technique to it broadening out such that folks who aren’t in that situation [terminally ill] asking for this, or feeling pressured to ask for it,” he said.
Leadbeater has claimed that Britain has a “moral obligation” to alter the law.
“There could be two doctors involved on this process and a High Court judge as well, so there could be layers and layers of protections …,” she told LBC.
“If we get this right from the beginning we’re giving people the selection I think they deserve but it is going to be a really robust piece of laws.”
Supporters include the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord George Carey, and Dame Esther Rantzen.
Lord Carey is just not representative of most Anglicans on the matter. In 2022, when it was last debated within the Church of England’s parliamentary body, the General Synod, only 7% supported legalising assisted suicide.
A survey of 1,185 Church of England priests by The Times newspaper last yr found that while support for a change to the law has increased, a majority (54.9%) are still opposed.
A survey of 10,000 people by Opinium on behalf of Dignity in Dying earlier this yr found that three quarters back the legalisation of assisted suicide. Only 14% were opposed.
An evaluation by i newspaper of 312 MPs who’ve publicly stated their view found that over half (54%) are in favour of fixing the law.
