On Wednesday, the Assisted Dying Bill was introduced to Parliament with the intention that MPs are given a free vote on the matter, probably at the end of November. I know that this is a highly emotive and complex issue, not least because we so rarely speak about death and dying.
Many of you here will have had painful experiences of sitting with a loved one during the last stages of their life. Certainly the clergy amongst you will be familiar with this through their own deathbed ministry. It is sadly the case that, for many people, the last weeks of life are filled with pain, sometimes agonising pain, and it is easy to understand the attractiveness to some of a solution that accelerates the peace that comes with death. A number of celebrities and some forceful media campaigning have made this solution a popular one with a majority in the nation.
But seemingly simple solutions often have unintended consequences. It is my strongly held conviction that the legislation currently before Parliament must be resisted and resisted strongly by people of faith and I invite you to do so.
I would give three reasons for this. The first is to avoid a slippery slope. The legislation before Parliament has been carefully drafted and is intended to apply only to cases where a terminal illness has been diagnosed and after consultation with two judges. But already in my mind there are questions. Anyone who has ministered to the dying knows that life expectancy is pure guess work and I know many people who have been given weeks or even days to live and have then gone on to live fulfilled lives for months and years afterwards. In our own Diocese, a priest who was widely expected to die before last Christmas has recently had the joy of meeting his two new-born grandchildren.
But more seriously, once the precedent has been set that medical staff are permitted to administer life-ending drugs, there can be no doubt at all that the range of cases in which this is permitted will increase. This has been so in every nation that has allowed assisted dying. The overwhelming evidence from Holland, Canada and other jurisdictions is that incrementalism is inevitable. Safeguards are dropped and medical killing becomes more and more the norm with the number of assisted suicides increasingly exponentially.
The second is to protect the vulnerable. Whatever the campaigners might say, the availability of assisted suicide will inevitably put pressure on elderly people and those who are near to death to put an end to their lives. Research from Canada and Oregon suggests that as many as half of those who have asked for assisted suicide have done so after pressure from family members. And even if pressure is not applied externally, frail elderly people who feel themselves to be a nuisance to their families will place such pressure on themselves.
Inevitably those who most feel such pressure will be those from the most income deprived backgrounds. Those who believe themselves to be a financial burden on their families will be in an invidious and intolerable position. How can we conceive of a legislative change that puts the most vulnerable people in the country in that sort of dilemma? Much is being made about choice in this debate. But by giving choice to one group of people, we will be taking it away from another. To relieve some people of physical pain, we will subject countless more to intolerable mental pain and torment.
The third is God. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Human life is God’s gift. It is precious and beautiful. When God looked upon the man and woman that he had made, he saw that it was good. Our life flows from God and will find its fulfilment in God. Our life is not our own possession.
And as Christians, we know that even suffering is caught up in the mystery of God. It is not purposeless. In our suffering we are mystically united with the suffering of Christ on the cross such that suffering and salvation are associated with each other. We must not use legislation to put ourselves in the place of God.
We know that there is a social care crisis in this country. We know also that 100,000 people are unable to access the palliative care that they need. The way to address this is not to make it easier for people to kill themselves. It is not to turn doctors, whose task is to cure, into agents of death with all the consequences that will have on their relationships with their patients.
What is required is a Government that has the courage to address the social care crisis and an NHS that invests properly in palliative care such that people can have a dignified death according to God’s timing, not their own. I believe that this issue takes us right to the very heart of the purpose, meaning and dignity of our humanity. And once a decision has been taken, there will be no way back.
So I would urge us as Christians to take action. What we can do?
First, we can raise the issue within our own congregations. Preachers, preach about it. Others, talk about it. And if that opens up a healthy conversation about death and dying, well all the better.
Second, we can write. The three Bishops will soon be writing to every MP in Lancashire and I would urge you to do the same. There can be no doubt that such letters have a real impact on the way MPs vote. Don’t use standard issue letters that others have written. Write yourself, in your own words. Keep it short and keep it personal.
And third, we can pray. We can pray with all our hearts for the dying, especially those whose death may be lonely or painful. We can pray for our MPs and all who will have to make such a complex and agonising decision. And we can pray for our nation, that we will continue to be a place that values the beauty and dignity of every human person made in the image and likeness of God.
+Philip Blackburn
October 19th 2024
