Bishops should reject Assisted Suicide law
The government continues apace with its secularist policies affecting the deepest moral customs of our nation, wholly unconcerned at the lack of any democratic mandate for such changes. Gay ‘marriage’ was the last diktat sprung on the astonished people of Britain by Mr Cameron, riding roughshod over millions of people who profoundly disagree with the very idea, especially given the existence of civil partnerships. This was sprung on the nation with no referendum on so deep a change and not a hint in his election manifesto. Now we hear that the PM is arranging a free vote on legalizing assisted suicide for people who have incurable illness and wish to end their lives.
The people designated to assist with such killing are the medical profession. The advance of the secularist agenda in radically eroding the core Christian understanding of the sanctity of life was shown last month when Belgium became the first country in the world to allow euthanasia for any age group, after its parliament backed amendments to the existing law in order to help end the life of a terminally ill child. Secularist articles are now appearing arguing for disabled newborns not to have the right to life: we are rapidly embracing a utilitarian ‘culture of death’.
Hard cases make bad law. That seems to be a principle needing radical reinforcement in this question. Yes, of course everyone is deepy sympathetic for the suffering of a person who cannot be cured and faces a life of frustration and pain, and wants to end life. Cases of such people refusing treatment, or force feeding, are distinguishable: they should not be compelled to receive such treatment to keep them alive, although problems arise when they are not mentally fit to make any decision. Active intervention to kill is however where the line is crossed.
This happens on a huge scale with abortions in the UK, foetuses considered not yet persons. Newborns being killed takes this a step further, as argued by Peter Singer, and the Belgian law a stage further still. Young life had been regarded as especially vulnerable and in need of state protection, not state euthanasia – how can such a child give informed consent? The government plans a free vote on whether to allow the killing of terminally ill suffering people.
As individuals, they can of course, if able, take their own life via the necessary drug mixture. At present Judges are increasingly reluctant to penalise family members who ‘help’ by giving such chemicals to their loved ones for this reason. We have a grey area, as with doctors who have given an overdose of morphine to such patients, formally to anaesthetise them, but resulting in death. This should remain a grey area, and not be formalised into a definite legal procedure underwritten by the state. That step gives a validation, a firm policy choice, an encouragement, to ‘mercy’ killing, and it fundamentally alters the role of our doctors from healers and palliative carers, to benign killers. So, Bishops in the Lords, vote for the sanctity of life!