PARLIAMENT voted for the law to alter on assisted dying “within the face of mounting evidence that it’s unworkable and unsafe and poses a risk to probably the most vulnerable people in our society”, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, said on Friday.
Responding to the choice by the House of Commons on Friday afternoon to progress the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (News, 20 June), Bishop Mullally, who’s the lead bishop on health and social care, warned that, “if enacted, this laws would come into force amid serious shortfalls in adult social care, a postcode lottery in palliative care and well documented pressures on the NHS, multiplying the potential risks to probably the most vulnerable.
“It doesn’t prevent terminally unwell individuals who perceive themselves to be a burden to their families and friends from selecting ‘assisted dying’. And it could mean that we became a society where the state fully funds a service for terminally unwell people to finish their very own lives but, shockingly, only funds around one third of palliative care.”
Having passed its Third Reading within the Commons, the Bill will now go to the House of Lords, where Bishop Mullally will probably be among the many peers scrutinising its provisions. It is unusual, nonetheless, for substantial changes to be made at this stage of the legislative process.
Francis Martin/Church TimesOpponents of the Bill praying before the result was announced
At the tip of her statement, Bishop Mullally, who’s a former Chief Nursing Officer, said: “We must oppose a law that puts the vulnerable in danger and as a substitute work to enhance funding and access to desperately needed palliative care services.”
The RC Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, said on Friday: ‘The task is now clear: every effort have to be made to limit the damage that will probably be done by this decision. This duty lies each on the House of Lords and on His Majesty’s Government.”
The vote on Friday was a “watershed moment within the history of our country. It fundamentally changes society’s long held values and relationships on matters of life and death”, he said.
Bishop Mullally noted that nearly all of MPs voting for the laws had shrunk because the Second Reading in November (News, 29 November 2024) from 55 to 23. This, she suggested, demonstrated that there have been “unresolved concerns” concerning the specifics of the Bill.
“Every person is of immeasurable and irreducible value, and will have the opportunity to access the care and support that they need – a principle that I do know is shared by those all faiths and none,” she said.
Many of those that gathered on Parliament Square on Friday to oppose the Bill did so based on their religious convictions. As MPs were voting, some prayed the rosary while others sang hymns.
The Vicar of St Mary Magdalene, Enfield, in north London, the Revd Dr James Lawson, was amongst those opposing the Bill. After the results of the vote was announced, he said that he was “very disturbed”.
“It seems that that is one other step towards the culture of death,” he said.
Many in his congregation were older people and vulnerable, he said, and he expected that they might be anxious a few change within the law. When he had expressed his opposition to the Bill in his church there had been applause, he said.
Dr Lawson said that he was grateful for Bishop Mullally’s open opposition to the Bill, but dissatisfied by the shortage of Church of England presence at Friday’s demonstration.
Among the pink-clad campaigners for a change to the law was an authorised preacher within the Church of England, Pamela Fisher. Her immediate response to the results of the vote was relief, she said.
“I don’t know that it’s going to be in time for me. I’ve got terminal breast cancer, and if it takes 4 years [for the law to be enacted] I’ll likely not be here. But I’m so glad that individuals coming after me may have that alternative at the tip of life,” she said.
She welcomed the prospect of the change of law bringing end-of-life decisions “into the open”. It would make individuals with terminal illnesses safer from coercion, she said, since the “scrutiny will probably be there, whereas before people were dying, and killing themselves, and there was no scrutiny”.
Ms Fisher said that her faith was central to her position on assisted dying. “My God is a God of affection, a God of compassion, and I believe he wants us to work along with him to create a more compassionate and inclusive world,” she said.
The sanctity of life was “rightly central” to Christian teaching, she said, but, for her, it meant “honouring every individual, and in fact giving them the most effective care and treatment they might possible have, including the most effective palliative care, but not torturing them at the tip of their life”.
The Roman Catholic presence on the demonstration included quite a few Sisters of Mercy. Asked what brought her to Parliament Square, Sr Margaret Jones, who is predicated in London, said “mercy brought us.”
“We give our lives for the lifetime of others, especially the poor and those that are vulnerable and who haven’t got a alternative in life,” she said.
She was particularly concerned about what would occur to care homes and hospices run by religious institutions in the event that they were obliged to facilitate assisted dying services.
In a press release issued after the vote, the RC Archbishop of Liverpool, John Sherrington, said that “unless there there are explicit protections, hospices could also be required to co-operate with assisted suicide. If this were to occur, the long run of many Catholic institutions may very well be under threat.”
In May, an amendment was defeated which might have ensured that an worker who works for an employer (resembling a hospice) who has chosen not to supply assisted dying couldn’t themselves accomplish that (News, 19 May).
Fr John Howard, an RC priest from Tunbridge Wells who was attending the demonstration on Friday, said that he was concerned for the repercussions on hospices.
“I’ve heard that in Canada, Catholic hospices have been shut down because they are going to not perform euthanasia or assisted suicide. There’s an ideal worry for Catholic doctors and nurses that they are going to have to choose from ending the lifetime of a patient or losing their job,” he said.
In 2020, the Catholic Herald reported that a hospice in British Columbia was being forced to shut after losing state funding due its stance on assisted dying.
In a post on social media on Friday afternoon, the Bishop of Tonbridge, the Rt Revd Simon Burton-Jones, said: “For all of the counter arguments, a core purpose of laws is to guard the voiceless and most vulnerable; fragile older individuals who don’t speak up and are disempowered in an ageist society. Today, Parliament has failed on this task.”
