A FORMER and current Archbishop presented opposing views on assisted dying on Friday, on the second of two days of debate on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill within the House of Lords.
“We belong with and for one another. This Bill is unsuitable since it ruptures relationships, serving one need but creating many others,” the Archbishop of York told peers, warning that passing the Bill would “unleash into our society a fundamental change in our relationships: the connection between death and life, doctor and patient, parent and child, citizen and state”.
But a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, said that the Church risked harming its legitimacy by standing in the best way of the Bill, which has already passed, albeit narrowly, within the House of Commons (News, 20 June).
It has been agreed that the Bill will now be scrutinised by a select committee, in a step welcomed by Archbishop Cottrell. But he said that, if it returned for a Third Reading, the bishops could be willing to table an amendment to force a vote on the problem.
Speaking at the tip of the controversy, he expressed sympathy with the need to not see family members suffer a chronic, painful death, but said: “There is an ethical universe of difference between doctors and clinicians, in consultation with families, withdrawing treatment within the last days of somebody’s life, to picking out six months as the purpose at which life for some may be extinguished.”
Archbishop Cottrell dismissed as wishful considering assurances that the scope of eligibility for the an assisted death, currently set as a life expectancy of six months or less, wouldn’t in time be expanded.
He also asked — rhetorically — whether anyone seriously thought that the passage of the Bill wouldn’t have a detrimental impact on palliative care.
He recalled the 12 months he spent working in a hospice, before he began training for ordination. It was, he said, probably essentially the most formative 12 months of his life, during which he learned that it was possible, typically, to manage terminal conditions so as to honour people’s dignity, “upholding their value as someone made within the image of God until their life’s end”.
ParliamentTVThe former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey speaks in the controversy
The House of Commons rejected an amendment which might have permitted hospices which didn’t want to supply assisted dying. On Friday, Archbishop Cottrell joined the RC Archbishop of Liverpool, the Most Revd John Sherrington, in criticising the move. In June, Archbishop Sherrington said that “many Catholic institutions may very well be under threat” consequently of the laws (News, 20 June).
As during last week’s debate, the benches reserves for the Lords Spiritual were full, and Archbishop Cottrell alluded to the strength of the bishops’ opposition. “If this Bill does reach a Third Reading, we on these benches could be prepared to table an amendment to supply us a vote,” he said.
Earlier in the controversy, the Bishop of Chichester, Dr Martin Warner, said that the concept of the proper to life “shouldn’t be considered the imposition of Christianity on the pluralistic society we’re proud to be”.
He suggested that a change to the law would affect “individuals who already doubt whether or not they are valued and understood”, and that it could take from them “the law’s protection from their right to life.
“It’s a fundamental assault upon their dignity,” he said.
Lord Carey is one among the few outstanding figures within the Church of England to talk in support of a change to the law. On Friday, he described how his views on assisted dying had modified over time. After voting against a Private Member’s Bill brought by Lord Joffe in 2005 he had looked deeper into the topic, and discovered that the “Christian faith had little or no to say directly about this contemporary issue”, he said.
“This shocked me very deeply, and I then explored more the experience of individuals going through shocking experiences of pain and indignity,” he continued.
It was “right” that sitting bishops within the House of Lords had spoken “so powerfully and well” in the controversy, but he suggested that they were “not representing their very own Church on this matter”.
In 2023, a poll by the campaign group Dignity in Dying suggested that a majority of Anglicans support assisted dying. At the time, Lord Carey and Rabbi Jonathan Romain said that the poll called into query the robustness of the opposition mounted by Church of England bishops (Comment, 13 October 2023).
Other polls have concluded that the view is within the minority amongst churchgoers. In July, the General Synod condemned the laws currently into account by a vote of 238-7, and called for greater funding for palliative care (News, 18 July).
On Friday, Lord Carey said that he was not “haranguing” the Lords Spiritual, but he reminded them of the Jesus Prayer — “Lord, have mercy” — and urged them to be mindful of “compassion, mercy, the act of kindness with the art of healing”.
He asked the bishops: “Do we really need to face in the best way of this Bill?” Regardless of opposition it could pass the House of Lords and turn into law, he said, and urged the Church: “Do not risk our legitimacy by claiming that we all know higher than the general public.”
THE former faith advisor to the Labour Party, and an Anglican priest, Lord Rook, said that he was concerned that the increasing costs of end-of-life care might drive vulnerable people towards an assisted death.
He said that states within the US where assisted dying had been legalised had seen an increase in the proportion of individuals selecting an assisted death due, no less than partially, to concerns about their funds and being a burden on their families.
Lord Rook called for further scrutiny of the Bill, supporting the proposal of a select committee and pledging to work on the Bill “for so long as it takes, to be certain that we may give end to all”.
ParliamentTVThe Bishop of Chichester, Dr Martin Warner, speaks in the controversy
On Thursday, it was announced that the Bill could be subject to a select committee process, effectively fulfilling the demand of an amendment that had been tabled by Baroness Berger. The Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, was one among numerous members who spoke in support of her proposal last week.
Friday’s debate was opened by Baroness Thornton, speaking in support of legal change, and urging peers to not reverse the choice taken within the House of Commons. “It will not be our job to kill this Bill,” she said.
She criticised the previous Prime Minister, Baroness May, for referring to assisted dying as suicide; and, later in the controversy, Baroness Blackstone said that her experience of her husband’s death from stomach cancer meant that she was “affronted” by such language.
“Be truly compassionate in sparing terrible suffering as death approaches, allowing those that decide to die sooner to achieve this,” Baroness Blackstone said, and called on those that object to the Bill to not “impose their views”.
Baroness Thornton quoted an authorised lay preacher within the Church of England, Pamela Fisher, who had said that she was “not asking anyone to assist me shorten my life” but as an alternative “looking for to have the selection to shorten my death if in my final weeks my pain and suffering prove unbearable”.
Ms Fisher, who has terminal breast cancer, had said that she “cannot reconcile Christian compassion with the established order that obliges people to suffer a drawn-out technique of dying in pain when it’s against their will and so they have the capability to decide on”.
Church leaders had engaged in “energetic lobbying” against the Bill, Ms Fisher had said, and invoked the principle of sanctity of life so as to achieve this, but she “rejected the belief that the sanctity of life requires terminally in poor health people to undergo a painful and distressing death against their will”.
When the Bill passed within the House of Commons in June, Ms Fisher was among the many campaigners gathered on Parliament Square. Speaking minutes after the result, she said: “My God is a God of affection, a God of compassion, and I feel he wants us to work along with him to create a more compassionate and inclusive world” (News, 27 June).
