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(Credit: by Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty)
Of all people, you might expect humanists to have protecting human life at the core of their ideological DNA. Instead, they are queuing up to plunge in the needle of death. This week, as Parliament prepares to debate the assisted dying bill, they are cheerleading a change in the law that will encourage the most vulnerable in our society to agree to kill themselves if they are persuaded to believe some greater good can result from their death.
The humanists talk blithely about “safeguards”, as if any legal system on earth can protect an elderly and highly suggestible person from the subtle forms of micro-manipulations with which someone can be persuaded that it is in everybody’s best interest for their death to be quick and painless. You can say “think of the children” with the tiniest inflection of the voice, make the subtlest of reference to money worries. We communicate with each other, often most powerfully, through almost imperceptible gestures of body language and facial expression. No legal safeguard on earth can detect such subliminal messaging.
And then to dress all this up as love for your mother — “We just don’t want you to suffer” — is the vilest of betrayals. Assisted dying legislation doesn’t just change the relationship between the dying and their doctors, and the dying and the state. It fundamentally alters the dynamics within families, and at the most emotionally complex period of someone’s life.
As the debate has unfolded over the past weeks, I have become less and less convinced of the noble declarations behind it. For some at least, the matter seems to be entirely ideological; namely, that the idea of choice has to be driven into every aspect of our lives. The attraction of this reasoning to our political decision makers is obvious: it exonerates them from their responsibility to keep people safe — their primary responsibility as law makers.
Consider capital punishment. Like assisted dying — or state-sponsored suicide — capital punishment is popular with the public. But whereas the opponents of capital punishment (as I am) point out that these terminations can be botched and cruel, few will make the same point with respect to assisted dying. Fundamentally, the state should not be in the death business. And making it easier and cheaper for the state to be allowed to kill people, rather than sort out the basic infrastructure of social and palliative care, and to keep people alive with dignity, is to push all the incentives in exactly the wrong direction.
The proposed legislation does not even mention the word suffering, though it is the desire to avoid suffering that is at the heart of the case for assisted dying. But suffering is so intrinsic to our existence that there is no legal or medical scalpel that is precise enough to excise it without also damaging the very things that give life its fundamental value. A radical project to rid the world of suffering, if carried to extremes, would also rid the world of love and hope, of courage and compassion. Of love, because love — love lost, love denied, love betrayed — is perhaps the greatest cause of emotional suffering; of hope, because hope walks a tightrope between success and failure, triumph and misery; of courage, because courage is so often a preparedness to suffer, risk suffering, for some greater good, and compassion, because definitionally means to suffer alongside. There is a vastly significant difference between wanting to alleviate the suffering of another through comfort and kindness and palliative care, and by seeking to alter the very terms of reference of what it means to be human. This assisted dying legislation is like introducing a zero hours contract with life.
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SubscribeWe understand all that.
But i’ll just copy what i posted on yesterday’s article on the same subject:
If palliative care was all its cracked up to be, there would be no need for debate, or this bill. The fact is, it can’t help those people with intractable pain or breathing difficulties which leads them to a protracted suffocation over days/weeks witnessed by their loved ones, unable to help due to fear of prosecution. Those who oppose this bill would change their minds if subject to this circumstance.
I hope they aren’t, as with anyone whose facile comments would deny the right to end ones own life with dignity. Argue if you wish – that’s the reality.
Edit: and don’t just downvote if you disagree – say why you’d be able to withstand those circumstances, either as a relative or someone in unremittable pain.
If palliative care was all its cracked up to be,
I don’t know about the quality of palliative care in most countries. I’d like to know but like everything else it’s like a closed shop unless you’re involved. Doctors and medical staff are regularly quoted as saying they wouldn’t let anyone suffer. I don’t know if it’s true or not, or if it’s even within their ability. I also feel the further we get into these issues the more elusive the truth of things. To me that means there has not really been a meaningful public debate. And there rarely is because sides are taken and rhetoric becomes a weapon. In the end I have to accept that I’m uninformed. But that only matters in discussions with friends and associates because in the end the decisions are made by those who have the power to make ideas law. Issues like this make me conscious of how hopeless the system is that we use to make decisions. I don’t think we’re capable of making the best decision, or the right one or the one that works. This is who we are; reasonably smart animals struggling to deal with issues beyond our capabilities. Whichever way we go on this people will get hurt. But probably the most insulting aspect is the posturing of many and what they reveal of themselves, The ad campaign in the underground is possibly the most insulting thing I’ve seen in my lifetime; it’s the branding of death, or murder if you like.
We’ve been slowly doing away with natural death for several decades now. Deaths from heart disease, strokes, infections, accidents, cancers, most of the major killers are way down. It sounds like Lancashire Lad’s relative who died of protracted suffocation would have died mercifully sooner of pneumonia if he/she didn’t have several courses of antibiotics and other drugs to prolong life in the months/ years prior. Fractured hips used to be a death sentence for the elderly. Now they are whisked into OT, given a new hip, up with physiotherapists the next day and home within a week. And jolly right too. But all this comes with a cost. We lose sight of what natural death looks like. It’s often agonising, protracted, suffocating, and because it’s difficult to watch, socially and personally isolating.
Dementia will soon become the leading cause of death. The average life span of a dementia patient is 8 to 10 years. That’s a sizeable chunk of life lived in confusion, fear and loneliness, slowly waiting for your brain to shrink enough to cut off vital functions. This will become what we call a “natural death”. Visits to nursing and care homes need to be compulsory. Similar to labour wards for pregnant women, dialysis units for renal failure patients etc. We need to see what we’re probably in for. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about, I visit nursing homes weekly for work. I’m used to seeing [and smelling] people milling mindlessly around a strange place, confused by other people they don’t know, being looked after by people who’s language or accent they don’t understand, and never seeing relatives [despite what you heard on TV during Covid- most family members don’t visit their demented relative- after the first few times they don’t see the point]. We’re not allowed to “chemically restrain” patients now, so they get to live the full horror of their particular mental misery. Listen to Andrew Sullivan’s recent podcast about visiting his dying mother- he could hear her screams from the car park.
This is not to say that we should be euthanising everyone with dementia. They would vigorously oppose it, and personally I could not do it. Even in infrequent lucid moments dementia patients just want to go home. But we need to be clear about the consequences of prolonging life beyond what has always been accepted as it’s natural limits. Surgery, antibiotics, chemotherapy etc are a choice. But we are in effect choosing to artificially prolong life. We are choosing a slower but not necessarily less painful way to die. Are we to deny some people the choice to end it sooner?
In effect you have answered my questions below. I agree with you about how medical interventions keep us alive and how that can make dying later more painful and terrible, but I do not agree with your conclusion. According to the law as it stands no one with dementia will be allowed assistance to die, so that group of people will not be helped . . . until, a few years from now, when we have got used to the new system, people start demanding that the law is changed to allow dementia patients to be euthanised too, despite not being compos mentis, and so it will go on.
Slippery slope arguments work both ways. I once came across a 95 year old dementia patient being fed through a tube directly into her stomach. I was told it was because of “food refusal”. Staff are far more likely to over-treat and prolong life these days out of fear of complaints.
It is disgraceful.
It is painful.
People have been dying for as long as there have been people. Why has it suddenly become so unbearable in the 21st century that we are contemplating euthanasia ? What has changed ?
We are living longer with more illness.
That doesn’t really make sense. In every age people had died from something that takes it’s time. It’s never been easy. The fact that we live longer makes no difference. Earlier most people may have died by their 60s, now it’s the 80s, but everyone still goes through the process. There are not more illnesses, just prolonged life. The percentages of illness are likely to be no different from age to age.
What has changed is the ability to do it pain free and the fact that we are allowed to talk openly about it.
Because they didn’t have a choice. Making out there’s some kind of inherent dignity in a slow painful death because people had no choice but to suffer one in the past is a rather flawed argument in my eyes. If we now have the means to avoid it, and people choose to take that option then that should be up to them.
Given the choice between a quick dispatch and 3 months of wasting away and sh***ing my pants because I’ve lost control of my bodily functions I’ll take the former.
Life is only special if it’s worth living. Quantity vs Quality is a decision only the individual is capable of making
Well, medical technology has advanced to the point where we can now keep a large number of old people who would have died previously alive much longer. And at great cost. Cost usually carried by others.
And all the moral dilemmas cited in articles like this already exist – doctors and relatives have to take decisions about when to turn off life support machines (this boils down to a sort of cost-benefit analysis at the end of the day, however vulgar you might find that), people take decisions about whether to abort foetuses.
These problems have existed for a long time now. Advancing technology (which you will be unable to stop) has made the scope of them far greater. So the scope will increase anyway regardless of whether this bill passes or not. A little slower. But we cannot stop it.
Fear and disgust would be a big factor, the idea we can eliminate anything we find unpleasant. We do this with everything. Abortion solves a problem, but it’s murder, so we dress it up in a language that hides the truth, instead of facing up to it.
I think many feel were involved in a change of ethics. We move further and further away from what we know is ethical. Euthanasia is a reasonable solution to the pain many have endured, but like many things it gets simplified so as to appear palatable. But many feel that it takes us closer to a total break with the ethics that have sustained us this long and got us where we are.
Yes. As someone says above, doctors have always quietly helped those at the end on their way. We trusted them to do this when it was appropriate. The danger of this legislation is that it changes that into officially sanctioned suicide. However you frame that it is not ethical.
This subject seems to generate many downticks without supporting commentary. That in itself says something.
I bear in mind that each person is in their own circumstances.
A relative of mine suffered from ovarian cancer 30 years ago. She lived 18 months after the original diagnosis. She was informed during that time that the condition could not be cured. The hospitals managed her condition. At the Royal Marsden she met Princess Diana, and was encouraged to talk at length to another sympathetic mother.
Before going into hospital for the last time, she had reached a point where her human frame was at the most exhausted point it could reach. Having not seen her for several weeks, the change in her physical appearance in that time was shocking. The most ghastly thing to see a young person so ravaged.
Yet I don’t believe she would have at any time in those 18 months have chosen assisted dying if it had been available, either to spare herself or her relatives. She chose to live each day to be with her children. She chose to endure seeing her husband break down at the prospect of his wife dying; a demonstration of his love. That, it seems to me, is courage and self-sacrifice. To live, not to die.
But as I say, each person is in their own circumstances.
Your example is such a human story in the sense of what it means to be human, Each to their own about how they die, but to diminish this deeply human experience with a political/science resolution to our burden seems contrary to everything we are. I would not want to suffer, nor would I want anyone else to suffer, but when I see the abortion numbers in the west it’s easy to see where this will go.
I’ve read and listened to a lot of the debate, and I’m struck by how much people don’t frame the proposition as it is being put: assisted dying would not be available to people who are depressed or ‘tired of life’, it is only an option for those who are in the process of dying. You have to be in a condition that will likely kill you within the next 6 months; by the time you have completed the application process it would more likely be only weeks ’till your death.
Does Giles really think people would be pressuring Mum to take the jab because they can’t wait another 6 weeks to get the money?
That’s why, also, assisted dying doesn’t change ‘the definition of what it is to be human’. It’s a (Christian?) mercy to allow a person the death that they want. One of the reasons they may choose it is because they want their loved ones to remember them as they were during their lives, and not just the unpleasant last few weeks.
I wonder if Giles has found what I have, which is, that many people over the age of 70 don’t really care if they dropped dead tomorrow: they’re here because they’re here, so they will enjoy what they can, and be good to the people they care about. Maybe there are people who are terrified of dying and want to resist it to the last minute, but I find, most people aren’t frightened of being dead, but they would prefer ‘ a good death’ of their own choosing. That’s what the polls seem to be saying.
I agree with you. It seems many who comment on this is issue do so from an instinctive angle – then suffer some form of internal conflict if/when they read the detail – and then ignore that detail to avoid further discomfort. I suspect that this occurs more often to those with religious beliefs. This may also explain the number of downticks without any supporting commentary.
Quite. There’s a strong whiff of the “I’m just speaking up for people who can’t speak up for themselves” about this.
This, of course, is exactly the model followed by the Communists and Marxists for over 150 years.
Meanwhile, the people they claimed that they represented (and whose agency they sought to suppress) were actually able to speak for themselves. And they turned out not to actually support the agenda of the people who claimed they knew best what is was they wanted.
Giles and co still think they know best and have some sort of authority to dictate what others may or may not do.
“They never listened, they did not know how. Perhaps they never will”.
Dan Hitchens pointed out in his article for UnHerd that while some individuals may achieve a happy death, this could not be guaranteed.
Additionally, the courts may extend the range of who is eligible without reference to Parliament.
Furthermore, as it has been observed elsewhere, if a person has to fill in a form with predetermined criteria to obtain permission to die with assistance, this is institutional control, not freedom of choice. The state would very much like to have bureaucratic oversight of death; death being the most personal and individual act in any person’s existence.
Dan Hitchens article was an appalling one. Doctors put thousands of people to sleep every day for complex operations, whereby patients can have limbs amputated and organs removed without feeling a thing while they’re under. Do you honestly believe that despite this they’d be unable to ensure a quick and painless death?
Yes!
We all want a painless death without loss of dignity. We all hate to see those close to us suffering. But then what? What of the Hippocratic oath “First do no harm”? Doctors can doubtless persuade themselves that ending a life at the request of a suffering person is merciful, but do they really want to become Dr Death? Will we all become so inured to the idea of medically induced death, as to treat it as casually as happens in Canada, where the depressed, the broke and the homeless can have assisted suicide, few questions asked. It happened with the 1967 Abortion Act, allowed on the ruling by two doctors that the mother’s life was at risk. Now it is celebrated as a glorious liberation to be performed for any reason, and in some jurisdictions at any stage of the pregnancy. It’s still ending a life.
I’d wager many doctors have upped a patients morphine dose at the end of their life, knowing full well that it may slightly hasten the end but it would make it as painless as possible. At least I’d hope they would if they had any humanity about them
Look at what happened to George V.
What happened to George V?
His doctor adjusted the doses of morphine so that his death would be reported first in The Times and not the evening papers.
Thankfully in many countries the patient has control of access to dosage of morphine. A lot of this is due to severe pain and is intravenous.
This is the permitted “double effect” treatment, whereby appropriate pain relief can be administered, even if it has the secondary effect of shortening life.
You’ve presented a compassionate point of view, without considering further legal implications that could–and do, in some countries–extend the ‘choice’ to include any reason. While laws are, of necessity, always open to change, there can be no guaranteed safeguards. Society must retain favouring life over death, and not give in to consumerist ideas about unlimited choice.
I’d say (and to Martin below) that our societies/legal systems obviously favour life over death. But with assisted dying the person is actually soon to die whether you want them to or not. It’s the manner of the death we’re talking about.
I dunno about the slippery slope argument. We gave plebs the vote, then women, then 18 year-olds … will our pets be next? Slippery slope suggests a misstep that sees you out of control, whereas these matters are debated endlessly, and for years, in the media, in parliaments, commissions are formed, reports from think tanks are issued, sermons are delivered, before a change is made to the law.
“Assisted dying would not be available to people who are depressed or ‘tired of life’, it is only an option for those who are in the process of dying. You have to be in a condition that will likely kill you within the next 6 months; by the time you have completed the application process it would more likely be only weeks ’till your death.”
Hello from Canada where this exact condition used to exist for our euphemistic MAID program. Yet, just as some predicted, once allowed in law, the permitted conditions for assisted suicide have become wider and wider. Now those with no foreseeable death are allowed to request it, for example those in severe pain or depression. There have also been numerous instances of people who requested and received it because they were unable to get the treatment or living conditions from the government that they think would have made their life worth living. And in Quebec, the government there has allowed advance directives, so that you can request it in advance in case of dementia, opening up the frightening possibility that someone could give such permission, come down with dementia, forget they had done so, then be killed against their will, even though they were living happily.
The slippery slope isn’t a fallacy as some like to claim. It’s very real.
Not all countries have followed the Canadian ‘slippery slope’. Look at Switzerland.
“many people over the age of 70 don’t really care if they dropped dead tomorrow” Really?! At 73 I’m not yet ready to shuffle off this mortal coil; there are plenty of things I’d still like to achieve with my life. Indeed, I don’t think my life really had a strong sense of direction until my 40s, a time when I started doing things (writing, taking singing lessons) that I wish I’d started decades earlier (GBS wasn’t wrong about youth being wasted on the young). And I have friends in their 80s and 90s who still lead active, fulfilling lives (although being mostly church people they would regard life as a gift rather than a burden).
many people over the age of 70 don’t really care if they dropped dead tomorrow:
As usual I question what you mean by “many”. Being 70 and over is far from being near the end. Being happy to “drop dead tomorrow” has nothing to do with a struggle, it’s more that they’ve lived a life and have a philosophical view of life. It doesn’t mean they’re ready to end it.
Anybody who looks at the history of Christianity will see that mercy has often been in short supply.
Largely irrelevant to the conversation,
Amongst the people the idea seems to be, we could all have “a good death”, when and where chosen by each of us. That is the demand I see on all those little bits of paper and placards shown in newspaper articles and in close-ups on the tv.
This attitude is typical of our time; choose your identity, choose your gender, choose your death. This is where liberal democracy has led us, is leading us.
How much do you want to bet a whole industry will develop,
‘Come to our peaceful mountain retreat where you can die surrounded by your loved ones, quick, clean removal to the undertakers part of the service.’
Do you want a rock ‘n roll death ?
A beach death ?
Death on a boat at sea ?
The market is waiting. I hope the bill is not passed because I fear this is what it will lead to, and it is obscene.
Meanwhile, those who die for their country in Ukraine are lauded for their heroism, courage, self-sacrifice and religious faith.
Risking death is not the same as suicide
There is no equivalence between officially sanctioned suicide and being a soldier fighting in a war.
The intention of soldiers is to fight and win the war, preferably staying alive and whole.
The intention of someone who is ill, in pain and plans to commit suicide could not be more different.
What is obscene about that? It sounds good to me!
“We are about to trade all this in for ‘human beings as units — in deficit or surplus to the collective”. Human value will now be plotted on an Excel spreadsheet.”
As if we don’t do that already?
Thank you. I’ve been struggling to articulate my misgivings about this topic and this essay has done that for me.
Someone below asked in a skeptical way whether it was realistic that relatives might pressure an elderly or ill person “not to be a burden.” Absolutely, in my opinion. And further what about the elderly or infirm who have no active family to stand up for them to a nursing home administrator who knows her budgetary bottom line might improve with one less mouth and one more available bed?
I agree there may be people for whom an ability to halt medical care and accept death should be an option and I support a procedure for allowing that. But I believe it should not be easy or quick and must involve evaluation from a truly disinterested authority.
The problem with this bill, as I understand it, is that from a philosophical angle it sets death up as a good. And when we define something as a good it’s in our human nature’s to wish to share it quite broadly.
“Poor Aunt Joan, she never really accepted how we were trying to ease her pain, but I’m sure she’s better off now.”
Procedures for this do in fact exist in most countries (Western, anyhow), including the USA and the UK: google “right to refuse treatment” and “living will”. It’s interesting that this rarely comes up in the debate.
I have a living will, but would like there to be an option to have assisted termination of life.
Who are you going to ask? What if they can’t bring themselves to do it when the time finally comes? It’s quite a thing to live with to make that quietus for someone else, even if they beg you. Also there hasn’t been much clarity or detail in the debate about the means. What are the proposals for ‘how’? A pill, a syringe full of morphine? A pillow? In the conservatory with the lead piping? Will it be an American-style staged pump system, so that the final lethal dose of poison is mechanically driven so that we can pretend no one had ultimate responsibility for it? Or maybe an ace marksman out in the car park?
I’m being flippant of course, but I’m genuinely curious about how this will be managed. Personally I would want to investigate the best way in advance and do it myself, rather than hand that poisoned chalice to someone else, who may spend the rest of their life wondering whether I might have recovered. But perhaps, just because some people confound doctors by going on long after the 6 month sentence, we will all just have to harden our hearts & do like we would with a wounded animal in the road…
In any case, medics have been doing it quietly for ‘terminal’ patients for decades. State sanction & the people’s thumbs up is just the next step. After that it will be Hunger Games for all.
‘it sets death up as a good.’ No, it sets a comparatively swift and painless death as a choice of the least worst option. Giles Fraser’s ‘god’, or one of the many others if you believe in that sort of thing, makes death an inevitability, often only after long periods of intense pain, loss of any autonomy, an agonising change from one person to another, or to none, or all of those, in the process destroying for family and friends the person they knew and loved, and replacing them with a dribbling, non sentient wreck.
Does your concern for the relatives consider the malicious ones? The greedy beneficiaries? Both eager to manipulate a vulnerable person.
Can you guarantee that the poison will give a swift, painless death in 100% of cases?
Does it matter if any of the medical staff enjoy the power of helping a suicide?
Why should the Samaritans bother?
Nursing home administrators? I think it more likely that their private equity bosses will be more influenced by the £8000 per month they receive to keep inmates ( just ) alive,
Philosophical – did I really read that right? I sat with my dying friend last year who had zero hope of survival and a few agonising days to “live” if you can call the hell he was going through living. He was desperate for his suffering to end. And you talk of philosophy? What sort of person are you?
I am so sorry to hear about your friend. Was there no recourse to palliative care and morphine relief? I also had a friend who died 6 months ago when her cancer finally could no longer be held off by medicine. But she had wonderful palliative care and did not suffer in the end. She died quietly with friends and family at her bedside.
I would wish for more hospices & the amazing nurses who work with them. Charity isn’t managing it. If we could fund them properly, then palliative care would be available more widely and the suffering that none of us want for either ourselves for the people we care about might be less prevalent. I’d like to think that wasn’t too naive…
Fat chance. The NHS cannot even fund quick diagnosis of cancers or speedy commencement of treatment giving them the greatest chance of life. I suspect those who put up all these objections have not sat at the deathbed of somebody who is fed up of suffering and desperate to die, or had to live with a terminally ill patient begging them to help them die. They put compassion after their rigid beliefs in religions which many believe are nothing but irrational nonsense.
The last sentence of this piece gives the lie to the whole. Assisted dying is not about poverty, but about a meaningless existence with suffering, and an ineluctable death only weeks away.
Dying is never going to be easy. Losing somebody you love or are close to will always be very hard.
I think it’s often understandable and to be respected if people say they don’t “want to be a burden” on their relatives. That is a choice not necessarily a sense of guilt. Even sometimes a greater love. As long as there is no coercion.
In my experience when people say they don’t want to be a burden they actually want to be reassured that they are not a burden. They want to hear their lives matter.
The one thing that the humanitarians, the parliamentarians and the courts will not be offering those about to die with assistance is the services of a priest.
It’s not just the influence of others on a person’s choice to request assisted dying that should concern us. As Liz Carr has pointed out, the very existence of this option will undermine people’s will to continue living; it will suggest to them that they not only have a right to die, but a duty to die, to stop being a burden on the state.
I worked in healthcare decades ago when many elderly patients remembered life before the NHS. It was heart-wrenching to hear their anxiety about what their treatment was costing, and whether they deserved it or not. I spent time reassuring them that there would be no bill to pay, and yes, they were worth it.
I used to be in favour of assisted dying for a small number of particular patient groups, but people will use human rights legislation to extend those groups until it includes most people with any diagnosis. It’s just not a safe thing for governments to legislate.
I’m not a Christian, but I do believe that the whole arc of human life is precious, from birth to death, and that suffering, & caring for those who suffer, is crucial to the human experience. I would even suggest that this is a defining quality of what it means to be human; that we feel compassion for one another’s suffering, and seek to support and care for the suffering. Assisted dying risks shattering our humanity.
I couldn’t give a blind f**k about it being a burden on the state. If I want to go I want to go. All that I would want is assistance in doing so and not leaving a huge mess for someone else to clean up.
“A duty to die”?? In my experience people who are dying care about their loved ones, they don’t think of the state. Look around at the evidence – ever increasing health budgets for more hospitals and staff, more medical research, more campaigns urging us to eat sensibly and get exercise. Does this sound like promoting a ‘duty to die’?
I am responding directly to the position expressed beforehand.
Sorry Lesley, I didn’t mean to reply to you, but to the original comment.
It’s very considerate not wanting to leave a mess for someone else to clean up. The someone else probably being employees of the state.
In 1908, a young woman threw herself off the pier at Eastbourne, Sussex, England. People had the disagreeable task of retrieving her body two days later from the beach some miles away. The coroner and the inquest jury had the task of dealing with the distressing matter and her father had to attend. No one could ascertain a motive and, presumably, her family had to live with the tormenting uncertainty of that.
Archaeologists have argued that early hominids ate their dead. Whether the motive was spiritual of merely the sort of economy that Mr Parris admires is unclear. Civilisation has transmuted that into the holding of a wake. Now society is incorporating the taboo of suicide into the civilised repertoire.
Indeed, ‘I want’. And people must have what they must have.
If you want, DIY, please. Don’t involve other people.
Why not? What if the “other people” are happy to help?
Queueing up, they are!
Perhaps poisoning oneself at home?
Give it a rest. It’s a choice and nome ofvyour business
Unnecessarily rude comment. This topic does need lengthy debate. There are risks involved and the choice may not be truly free, when we do not have adequate end-of-life care in this country.
It should be up to the individual to decide whether their care is adequate. You can’t hold people in limbo until the health care or welfare system is fixed. If you want people to choose life, your effort should go toward making their lives better.
“…up to the individual to decide whether their care is adequate. You can’t hold people in limbo until the health care or welfare system is fixed. If you want people to choose life, your effort should go toward making their lives better.”
What you propose offers a perverse incentive for NOT improving care/palliative care so that more people will feel obliged to “choose” death rather than life. Perhaps that is where we are right now. And why…
It’s the business of the person agreeing to help kill someone.
The existence of the NHS does not mean that palliative care is any cheaper than it ever was – given the complete inefficiency of the health service rather the opposite one suspects.
It just means that the cost is paid by tax rather than direct, so those that wish to linger do not pay the bill.
That’s a strange way to put it, “those that wish to linger”. Hopefully, not having arrived at your time of death means more than just wishing to linger. It’s still living, and can and does mean so much more than that. Never has there been such care of the sick. Medicines and drugs are stronger and more effective than ever. We have less suffering today at the end of life than we’ve ever had. Yet, it’s not enough.
It also happens the other way around: that family members and loved ones cling to a terminal patient who would rather end the suffering. Or that the patient realizes that family members do not want to let go and for this reason keeps going. From this position we should also consider the fact that modern medicine is capable of extending life in a terminal phase for very long, far beyond what can be considered ‘natural’.
There are countries that already have a long history with this legislation, like the Netherlands. I think it is useful to learn about their experiences. Not just advocates, also people who are opposed as well as people who changed their mind.
It was like that with my late grandmother. She was a person of faith who was quite robust until about 90, but lived until 94. Her final months were spent bedridden, with multiple family members and hired caregivers in home attendance—in which she was much luckier than some. But she was ready to go before that stage was reached, and a lot of major intervention—nebulizers, a library of pills, etc.—was needed to keep her ticking on. She consented to most of it for the sake of others, including me. In retrospect I regret how fiercely I advocated that she keep going no matter what, sometimes against her own will.
More recently (in July) my Canadian uncle took the “legal exit” at age 85, after more than 20 years of fighting cancer by every means available. I’m uncomfortable with his choice and sad that a favorite uncle is gone. But after watching my grandma wither but grimly endure I can’t resort to high moral outrage like I think I would have done several years ago. He was suffering a great deal, for as long as he could, and had a prognosis of no more than a few months to live.
I’m still in opposition to letting people check out for what seems like intractable depression or pain that is not terminal—but I’m not certain how I’d feel if the intense suffering were mine. Also, those who are still robust enough to move around or plead for assistance could still take the ‘classic’ path of an illegal exit.
Thank you, Giles, more than words can express, for this clear and compelling article. May it be widely shared and discussed…
how can a personal trainer be qualified to present such a Bill – or Parliament be permitted to allow so brief a discussion on ‘assisted suicide’ – it is a horror story unfolding.
Like so much that is happening the policy has been determined elsewhere and some time ago. It been given a few hours debate in parliament exemplifies the fact that parliament has become a pantomime shadow of its former self.
There are other progressive liberal countries where this is being promoted. Canada already has it in place and offers assisted dying even to those suffering depression.
Australia already has it too. It is working fine.
Quite a whiff of snobbery there. Kim Leadbetter ( sister of the murdered Jo Cox MP, ) is a democratically elected MP and MBE, her academic qualifications, from the north, (thrown in) are not relevant. As a middle aged woman her experiences are wide and deep. Not that I agree with her, I don’t, but let’s not be obviously prejudiced. No she’s not a male Oxbridge graduate from the shires.. hells bells.
There really should be more to this discussion than that the MP proposing it is DEI certified.
Why is Leadbetter’s MBE, academic qualifications, election and is a woman from the north relevant to whether or no people should be assisted to kill themselves?
Do any of those attributes confer wisdom or good judgement?
They are just more respectful descriptions of her achievements than ‘personal trainer’ that’s all. It was disappointing to read such sneering comment in an otherwise excellent article.
The institutions we commonly call churches made theology subservient to economy a very long time ago. That doesn’t make everything about such churches wrong or evil, but it does greatly hinder the intended message.
Continue writing articles espousing antiquated concepts like “brotherly love”, “imago Dei” and “lovingkindess” and you’re going to earn a reputation. For thoughtfulness and decency.
The profanation of a once-great culture proceeds apace. Thanks for being among the few who, to misquote the Apostle, “kick against the pricks.”
If I want to die I should be afforded caring help to do it. I don’t want to have to plan and potentially botch the job.
While I basically have sympathy for your position etc I don’t see why you should be given free assistance to plan/execute your own death. If you want to do it fine but why should others contribute?
For the same reason that we would all fund your heart surgery, even if you brought in on yourself by becoming fat and unfit.
Why should you be able to put that moral burden on someone else?
Why would it be a “moral burden”?
Caring? Or someone who enjoys causing death? How would you pick out the Shipmans at interview?
BTW what guarantee have you got that your death would be quick and painless? US states that execute by injection have bodged their deaths?
Fraser correctly describes the utilitarian logic behind assisted suicide but we live in a fallen world where budgets are shrinking and palliative care is expensive. There should be freedom of choice when to die and it will save money too which means that it has a positive benefit for those who suffering is relieved and a negative cost and hence a strongly positive Net Presnt Value. If God botherers dislike this then they shouldfund palliative care for potential takers themselves just as anti abortionists should privately fund the cost of bringing up unwanted children.
Hospices in the UK are funded entirely by charitable giving. The demand for infants for adoption vastly outstrips availability.There are great numbers of infertile couiples who would love to be able to adopt.
The Catholic Church has said this for decades.
The Catholic Church has fiddled kiddies for decades too.
This is self important piffle – in every other sphere of our human world we champion the fundamental right to self expression and self determination. The most basic right to decide that one wishes to die cannot and must not be over ruled by any other human – and certainly not one affected by any of the various forms of the totally random and divergent religion that humans utilise for their various purposes.
That your post-modern ideology. Most people do NOT believe radical autonomy is the core of life. We are intrinsically linked into families, towns, parishes, nations, etc. with reciprocal obligations and rights that vary across the relationships.
If I have a fundamental right to self-determination, why do I have to give the Gov’t 30% of my income?
Parishes? Seriously?
Most of what goes on in law and health and education is utilitarian and considers units, numbers, costs in decision making. This is the very longstanding norm. The argument seems to fail in that objection leaving only the proposal that there is something different about life/death compared to all the other human factors. There does seem to be something different but apart from the Christian reasoning the difference seems to go unexplored here unfortunately.
They are transhumanists, not humanists. And they were transhumanists when they came up with chemical birth control, abortion on demand, and gender reassignment, hormonal or surgical.
Don’t worry about any of this comrades. The direction of travel of the present far-Left government means that most of us will either starve to death due to the eventual collectivisation of farms, or find ourselves in front of a firing squad for having the temerity of holding none sanctioned beliefs and opinions.
I am by no means a utilitarian, and yet I see value in the freedom to choose not living over living. And currently I have 100% interest in living as, I suspect, pretty much everyone does.
And for those few who do not, a dignified exit seems appropriate. And because, according to Giles, I am “made in the image and likeness of God,” she must see it similarly. Right? And if she doesn’t? Then she must be a nasty piece of work to set me up like this.
Very eloquently put!
For me, the call for assisted dying is a response to medical advances that prolong human life without making it better. Human life is miraculous and fragile. We are not meant to live forever and that is what makes it precious. But just because we can keep people alive, we need to ask, should we? Nature, God, whatever you want to call it would end the suffering if we just let it. Instead we push cocktails of drugs into people, warehouse them and turn them into potted plants, fitting them into wheelchairs as quickly as possible so they can be fed, watered, put out for air and then lights out, all to fit the schedule of the long term care home. There is no dignity in that existence, only money to be made by industries that keep up the pretense of caring.
People are free to reject medical care at any point. There’s a yawning chasm between refusing care, and asking someone else to kill you.
No they are not. I’m sure many of us have relatives who tried it.
I’m unaware of any law in the US that can force you to receive medical care. If a patient is mentally competent they can check themselves out of hospital, against medical advice, and go home. No one can come into your home and force you to receive medical care.
But once you are physically or mentally incapacitated you are stripped of most of that stubborn agency. In other words, at the point life becomes most miserable, it becomes least your own. Not that our lives are entirely our own anyway.
Sure, but there’s no answer to that here. A mentally incapacitated person can’t consent to anything, much less being killed.
Right. But I’m highlighting the fact that you can end up institutionalized, without the real ability to refuse care, though not totally incapacitated in body or mind. I’m not taking a definite stand just pointing out that not everyone has a home to go to or retirement savings or family help. Or, in these United States, access to good health care that they can afford.
Thank you. Very well put.
A good starting point for this debate is to not do what Canada is doing by gradually expanding the program well beyond anything that might reasonably fall within its scope. It’s one thing for the 89 year old cancer patient to be ready to call it day; it’s quite another when death is offered up to the depressed, the homeless, the financially struggling, and assorted others who are nowhere near a natural death.
Do you live in Canada? I do, and I am quite happy with it all. I would like it to be expanded so that I can stipulate that, under certain conditions, I would like MAID.
You like that Canada offers a disabled veteran euthanasia as an alternative to help with mobility?
Would that extend to stipulating it for others too? Because I’m hearing some quite shocking things from my sister who also lives in Canada. She can’t wait to get out of the country…
I’m sure the Canadians will wave her off at the airport.
The program will be expanded well beyond its original parameters. It’s happened in Canada and the Netherlands. All you need is to open the door in the first place.
Good!
Charlotte Gill has been digging around to see what the occulded networking is contributing to what appears in the Legacy Media:
The Assisted Dying Lobby and it’s Publicists
https://www.charlottecgill.co.uk/p/the-assisted-dying-lobby-and-its
I asked my dear friend who is actually planning to leave this wordily domain due to fatal incurable illness in the not-so-distant future: шhat she thought of the article? Flapdoodle, she said.
Pulling the switch on human lives sounds like we want to be God. Different people have different motivations but to put it into policy to make it easier sounds a lot like balancing an excel sheet like the vicar said. X
Well…are we not already “playing God” when we keep people alive as we do these days. In the past we would have let them die as “God” planned. Look at the care we provide to those newborns who, it could be argued, were meant to die. Look at the elderly and demented who live in nursing homes where there are inadequate staff(and there will never be enough staff) who are kept alive.
Perhaps it would be an idea to invite an experienced insider to write about this from a country where assisted dying legislation already has long history, like the Netherlands. It doesn’t have to be an advocate of course, someone who changed their mind is also very interesting. Now the discussion is often pushed through a conservative, religious or progressive narrative, which has its value but might introduce cognitive dissonance and bias.
I have a medical background but no particular medical experience with any of this. However, I did discuss it on occasion with people in and outside of the field and personally gathered anecdotal stories over the years. So I thought I share my thoughts.
As far as I know in most – I would hope all – countries the decision can only be made by someone who is considered to have the full mental capacity of doing so. Patients with dementia do not qualify, for example. If there is an advance directive physicians still have to determine if there is indeed a state of ‘unbearable suffering’. Approval from an extra independent physician is always necessary in any case. Some terminal patients actually fear that they get into a phase where they suffer but they have deteriorated so much that they are not allowed to make the decision anymore, even if they are still (semi) conscious.
As for family members and medical professionals influencing the decision it is reasonable to wonder if any safeguard is ever enough. Nevertheless, I believe it is more common for family members to cling to a terminal relative, when the patient would rather end the suffering. That is also the flip side of modern medicine. We can help patients survive that would have otherwise died. But we are also capable of endlessly extending a state of suffering in a terminal patient, which is not ‘natural’ either. This might give another perspective on the “first do not harm” part of the Hippocratic oath. Of course letting someone die is different from active euthanasia but terminal patients usually already received extensive treatment at that point. People have been choosing death for thousands of years, usually simply by refusing to eat. Animals do it as well. But even food can be forced in a clinical setting with methods such as parenteral nutrition. One could also wonder if dying in a prolonged sedated state is actually so humane and natural.
Related to this discussion is the concept of quality of life. Even in countries where assisted dying is not legal a decision “not to treat” or ‘giving up’ often has to be made in critical care. Many Western countries emphasize quality of life over purely survival and this might also be based on statistics as well. For example, that a patient only has a 1/1000 chance of survival or that the patient will most likely live out their lives as a ‘vegetable’ anyway. ICU capacity is (sometimes purposely) limited and expensive but this should not, in my opinion, impact the decision.
How assisted dying is actually performed is more of a technical discussion, even if that may sound cold. As far as I know, the reason why there have been cases where there were problems with capital punishment in the US is because physicians and pharmaceutical companies do not want to be involved in executions. In a medical setting it should be different. In practice an extremely high dose of propofol is often administered which induces a very deep coma pretty much instantly. Neurological activity should have stopped at this point as far as we know. Actually many terminal patients already die now because they are so weakened. After this the lethal injection is administered. What happens precisely beyond our scientific understanding with regard to (near) death experiences is of course not known and perhaps those questions should still be considered as well. However, physiologically speaking “botched and cruel” deaths should be preventable and I have not heard about such cases. Nevertheless, even if some might consider the ‘departure’ peaceful others might still find it shocking, it is still something very serious for everyone involved. All in all none of this should ever be taken lightly I think.
We already started the process in the US by stuffing Nursing homes full of Covid cases when overflow medical facilities sat unused.
of course the results where predictable and thousands more elderly and infirm died to keep hospital beds free for younger patients.
As St. Nicola did in Scotland. Our local care home suffered an almost complete wipe out.
‘Fundamentally the state should not be in the death business.’. Giles is quite right. But it has been since the formation of the NHS and the passing of the Abortion Act. This Assisted Dying Bill is a logical extension.
By the way, when many dementia patients says they want to go home, they tragically mean home to their parents not to their house.
It’s quite ludicrous that we offer a kind and caring death to our pets, but because of “moral principles” we inflict terrible deaths upon fellow human beings who wish to avoid such an ending. No one who wants to go a full term to death, with any associated suffering, is inhibited by this legislation- only those who wish to avoid such an ending can CHOOSE this alternative. To inflict suffering on others who do not. want to suffer is cruel- is inhumane.
When you are suffering horribly in extreme pain or constantly choking on fluid in your lungs with no chance of recovery, perhaps you will reconsider your barbaric stance.
Ask for better palliative care. Rather than for people to kill themselves.
BTW, good palliative care already exists.
You can ask for “better palliative care” all you like. We are going to ask for “the green needle”.
Unherd certainly has a bias against MAID. I would like to see an article that presents a different perspective. I live in Canada, and I would like to see the MAID law expanded to allow me to stipulate that I want MAID if I am demented and am unable to make the decision.Yes, there is room for abuse, but I believe that the positives outweigh the negatives. If I decide I want to die, I want MAID. And, Giles, other people do have to be considered, not only the ill person. I have friends who are ~80 years old and have husbands who are terminally ill and still at home. Looking after these old men is killing the wives. There will never be enough “help”. Soon there will be incapacitated wives as well as husbands. Also, money is a limited resource, even it you, Giles, do not accept it. So, Giles, I do not want you or anyone else making the decision that I should live when I do not want to live.
Unherd gets contributions from independent writers and this one is against MAID. That does not constitute bias. Let someone else write the case for it.
Your practical arguments embody the spreadsheet approach that Giles talks about. I notice you do not mention what those terminally ill husbands want. So you have implied they have a duty to die.
Caring for a needy person takes something out of you, it’s true. We don’t always get to choose when that is asked of us. It’s a bit strong to say that it kills us though! Grey hairs, maybe. I hope my family will burden themselves on me when they need it. And I reserve the right to do the same.
If one listened to commenters on UnHerd, one would think the Canadian legislation was terrible, but actual Canadians seem to support it.
The assisted dying debate looks only at possible problems and not at benefits. Consider this scenario: a 94 year old woman with mild dementia who is partially deaf, partially sighted, doubly incontinent, suffering from an untreatable urinary infection that has led to sepsis that has resulted in her attempting to get out of her chair in her room in a residential home, where she has been beautifully cared for. She has fallen and broken her shoulder. She has severe hip arthritis, has had both hips pinned because of previous fractures and has signed an advance directive. In hospital she is again beautifully cared for, but has refused all treatment. Her immediate family are with her, staying in a hotel nearby. Her death is inevitable. Her family spend most of the day by her bedside. The inevitable occurs – after 11 days, in the middle of the night when her exhausted family are not there. Would it not have been kind to end her life earlier, when her family could have been with her?
I ask because, as her son, I am left irreparably scarred by the fact that I was not there at her passing. I suffered from watching her fade away. What possible harm could come from a lethal injection when the outcome was without doubt? She was no burden to the state, other than occupying a hospital bed for those 11 days. Her care home care was self-funded.
Lest anyone should think there is anything mercenary about this bear in mind that she gave her health during WW2 doing diving experiments that paved the way for the D-Day landings and that subsequently she became a doctor – as I am. Her prolonged dying was of little agony to her, but of great pain to me. We forget the distress of relatives in this situation at our peril.
Have you ever considered that she might have wanted to pass when “nobody was in the room”? I believe it is quite common.
I find Giles Fraser is either on or off and seldom in between. In this case he is definitely on: a fine essay. I wasn’t reading the ToL for a time and missed Matthew Parris’ argument in favor of culling old folks to fatten the bottom line, but it is what I would expect from a lordly globe-trotting man of wealth.
The approval of Matthew Parris does not automatically make any position wrong, however tempting it may be to believe that.
It is unsurprising that the recent generations who want to micro manage every little thing in other people’s lives have finally turned their attention to finality. These are the people who think it is an actual crime to say something unkind, who need to know exactly what will happen tomorrow, who need so many assurances and guarantees about every aspect of life that even buying a house is so fraught with danger that an endless paper trail ensures a tedious and needlessly protracted contract. On your point about consent Giles how on earth is a dementia sufferer going to make an informed decision? And how long will it be before an official dying date will be set for the entire population? Ironically the problem of a huge number of very ill elderly people is a result of the risk free living obsession as well as obeying BigPharma. I can remember when flu was called the old man’s friend but now the old man must be vaccinated against every eventuality or risk being removed from his Doctor’s patient list. Most GPS like conformity and the funding which follows it. So having preserved an increasingly frail population the plan is to kill them – nice and tidily. And all those people who had the book thrown at them for helping a helpless relative to die? Will they be like all those Catholics and redeemed from purgatory for eating meat on Friday when the pope changed the rules? Of course this bloated administration will get it passed. There are enough ambitious drones in the House who will do what is required.
‘a former personal trainer with a degree in fitness and health-related exercise from Leeds Beckett University’. So much for ethics and ‘Christian’ generosity of spirit, eh Giles? The whole article is a lurid, overhyped, irrational and insulting rant. Believe all the ‘godly’ superstitions you like, claim that your particular strand of religion underpinned a thousand years of civilised progress – bar burnings of heretics, Inquisitions, persecution of the Jews, and a few other inconsequentialities, of course, and ignoring the fact that there were equally moral societies long before your god sort of, in a roundabout and not too convincing way, revealed himself and his message once, twice, or 3 times, take your pick, – but please keep your half-arsked opinions to yourself. Your choices in the matter are being respected whether the measure gets through or not. Don’t presume to deny mine.
for once, I think I’m in complete agreement with you, Giles! One major concern I have is that the avaricious ghouls will emerge to make money from human tragedy…the end of life. Companies will emerge that assure us that your transition from life to non existence will be smooth, pain free and actually, quite an uplifting experience for those left to mourn…it’s all lies of course. The only recourse to a dignified end is to take control of it yourself, and to make sure nobody can be implicated by your choice of departure. Personally, I would not trust any agency that wanted to be involved in the manner of my leaving.
Your post concerns me because you are not so much objecting to suicide as to corporations. You even seem to be advocating independent suicide – correct me if I have misread you. Please take care and make sure you are listening to the right voices in your life.
Thank you for your concern, but there is no need. Suicide is a horrifying end to a life, and also elicits my deep concern, but is not the issue in question here.
What’s “horrifying” about it? It is surely a better thing than suffering.
perhaps we should relabel assisting your own death when the inevitable is in sight something other than suicide. The horrifying aspect of suicide is when it’s an avoidable death; an otherwise healthy person with issues that they can’t overcome.
I long ago decided that if I got to the point where my life stops being fun, I will “take matters into my own hands” and end it. I guess that is “suicide” by any definition. You may however label it whatever you wish. I won’t be around, so I won’t care.
Strangely, Martin, I agree with you absolutely.
I am of course lucky, in that I own guns, and the “suicide” bit would be no problem for me. Not everyone is so fortunate.
Intriguing suggestion. Is it suicide in the general sense to stab yourself out of this world as a death squad bangs down your door?
We could call it self assisted dying…cut out the middle man, or mess.
Makes sense. An expedited exit, with a modicum of agency. I’d not call drinking poison as the marauding hordes approach (or whatnot) suicide in the regular sense.
Overly long and emotive to excess to the point where the argument almost disappears.But eventually the Vicar of St Anne’s does concede in a roundabout way that his key objection is that human life is special. It’s simply the religious argument again.
I think there’s a lot more to Giles’ article than that. (Subtle coercion, slippery slope, danger of economy directing ethics.)
But what, out of curiosity, would you like to substitute “the religious argument” with to guide us?
Are you suggesting that the only possible compassionate ethical philosophy must be based in religion? That atheism can’t possibly provide any credible argument in this instance?
I was inviting you to explain how it can.
I can’t speak for Quentin, but in my view, things like this should be decided by the people as a whole, through their elected representatives (or by referendum), rather than by the absurdly dressed clergy of a discredited and dying religion.
Majority support or democratic process may be a means to make a decision. And that is what is happening of course.
But it is not the basis for determining something to be right. If the majority supports euthanasia, it is still valid to question the basis for this. If that basis is not religious, then what other thing is it? After all, different democracies (or the same democracies at different times) come to different conclusions. And then what is the basis for democracy anyway?
The basis of democracy is “the will of the people”, not “the will of a bunch of clerics”. If you want the latter, Iran is probably a good place to go.
You missed my point. It is valid to influence the will of the people through reasoning. The will of the people is not a fundamental truth, it is based on something, and it is changeable. I’m not against democracy. But if “the will of the people” is ultimate, then surely we should object to something like UnHerd, for example, which seeks to challenge herd mentality.
Democracy must necessarily involve the will of the majority being followed. Does anyone seriously doubt that a majority of Britons are not in favour of VAD?
Well we can discuss the subtleties of representational democracy versus referenda, but basically I agree with your statement.
However, your overarching aim here seems to be to discredit minority opinions, implying that Giles or others (especially anyone “religious”) ought not to be commenting because they are out of line with the majority.
I somehow doubt that you align with majority opinion on every issue. When those come up, do you decline to comment out of respect for the will of the people? If so, perhaps you’d prefer a publication called “Herd”!
In short, it is perfectly fine for religious folk or anyone else for that matter to explain (respectfully) why they disagree with something even if it is majority opinion.
Look to Canada where almost anything goes in ‘assisted dying’, especially in Quebec.
A ‘duty-to-die’ is coming.
Some in the medical field will specialize in helping people commit suicide.
It will be a lucrative industry.
Do you want your doctor to be someone who advocates ‘assisted dying’ instead of someone who wants to help you?
If there’s a whiff of money to be made from helping people put out the big light, then you may be sure that the psychopaths will be all over it and ready to put us all out of our misery.
Pallative care is great when it works. Sadly, sometimes the pain and humiliation is beyond the reach of any wonder drug. I hope when I go out I will be lucky and can go Not Quietly into the dark, but if not I want to be able to say, Enough.
My grandmother asked her doctor – the family doctor, known to her for years – when she was dying of bowel cancer in the early 60s, to ‘let her go’. I guess it would have meant increasing the dosage of morphine and he did it. Thanks for that, doc. If we can replicate that now, we will have progressed. .
A load of tripe. The bill will only apply to those with a terminal illness, and less then 6 months to live. I would have thought that most would approve of such a law, release from further suffering, or are the anti lot just a bunch of sadists ?.
The latter.
The legislation is a farce, a sop. You have to jump through so many hoops before you would get any help for an assisted suicide you would probably be dead before a judge will give their permission
Let us choose.
Giles Fraser describes the Bill as “a private member’s motion that will overturn perhaps the most basic of our moral and philosophical presuppositions — and Parliament will have only a few hours to debate it.” Private Members’ Bills go through all the procdures that major Government Bills do: Commons second reading, committee stage, third reading, Lords readings and committee stage. There will be many hours in Bill Committee in the Commons and then the Lords. The process will probably continue until June or July 2025. The Bill will receive very close scrutiny.
David (Lord) Steel has said (last week) that for reforms of this type Private Members’ Bills are the right procedure, not a Government Bill. He sponsored the Abortion Reform Bill, enacted in 1967, and referred to the divorce reform and homosexual reform legislation of the same period. All three reforms became law through Private Members’ Bills of the same type as is being used for the Assisted Dying Bill.
The proposed law will probably receive closer scrutiny in Britain than any legislation passed in other countries for assisted dying.
I must say that the ability of most readers to choose the worst solution is nothing short of admirable.
Why are you in the Church of England Giles? This IS liberalism. This IS the Enlightenment. This IS humanism. This IS the end point of the Reformation. This IS what you have been defending your whole life
I see the writer is a Christian clergyman. It is therefore no surprise that he venerates suffering. After all, the symbol of is faith is a man nailed to a cross.
Sacrifice—joined to forgiveness and love even for one’s enemies—would be another way to put it.
The thing that most baffles me about Christianity is why it goes on and on about forgiveness and love, when what it practices is hatred and intolerance.
That’s as one sided as can be and I think you know it that. Not all of it is merely hollow lip service. “Lay down your life for your brother” and “love your enemies” are, for most of us, impossibly tall orders. Mercifully, most of us are not put to an ultimate test. But the example can still lead in a good direction when received with an open heart.
If you’re genuinely baffled, perhaps it’s time for you to read the three synoptic gospels of Matthew, Luke, and Mark and see what you can find out from the closest thing we have to original sources here. I wasn’t raised in a churchgoing family and I’m not an institutional Christian, but I have profound reverence for the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. I don’t sense that you’ve ever read what you dismiss. Correct?
I actually have a great deal of respect for the human being who became known as Jesus Christ. He strikes me as a particularly enlightened guy, all the more so given the era in which he lived. That said, I obviously don’t believe all that “son of God” and “died on the cross/rose from the dead” stuff. Both of my parents were religious, and my mother remained so until the end of her life. One of her brothers was a Lutheran clergyman, with whom I had many interesting discussions about religion. In my early childhood, I even accompanied my mother to church, although I quickly realised that there was nothing in that place for me. There are certainly good, honest Christians, and even good, honest Christian clergy. However, I think the Church itself is an abomination (and I suspect that if Jesus himself could see what had been created in his name, he would agree). I doubt this is specific to the Christian Church(es). I suspect that it is a function of all organised religion. My view is (and I appreciate that I have said this previously on these pages) that as soon as you get someone who says “You can’t talk to God, only I can do that. Still, it’s ok, because I will talk to him, and let you know what he says”, you have a problem.
Thank you for providing those details. I shouldn’t have made assumptions about your experience or perspective, which I still do way too often (I used to be even worse!). I tend to be intensely defensive of the extraordinary human being who became known as Christ.
I don’t disagree with most of what you say here, except the general application of the term ‘abomination’. Institutions are bound to fall short of their aspirations when they are in any way high or venturesome. There is massive, appalling corruption throughout much organized religion, but in my view that largely just reflects the shortcomings of humans and institutions overall. However, the failures are magnified by the haughtiness of the claims, and the level of hypocrisy and greed we can find in many churches.
I totally agree about people who purport to have special or singular access to God or the divine—major red alert.
You refer to the gospels of Matthew, Luke and Mark. I’m sure you are aware that there were many “gospels” at one time, but the Church of Rome trimmed them to the four that are now contained in the New Testament for its own reasons, none of which strike me as particularly valid. After all, the gospels were merely the accounts of ordinary men concerning the actions of a person they regarded as divine. They were not (initially at least) regarded as intrinsically “holy” in the way the Koran is in Islam. My personal view (and it is just that) is that the writings of the Gnostics come closer to what Jesus was on about than the gospels generally. However, having decided what books were to be in the Bible, the Church or Rome set about eradicating the rest, up to and including torturing and murdering any adherents they had (have a look at how the Cathars were dealt with). When the Church of Rome is in “evil” mode (which I regard as pretty much its default position), it doesn’t do things by halves.
I’m familiar with the existence of non-canonical gospels, some of them extant. I’ve read so-called Gospel of Thomas, which (as you likely know) is a collection of more than a hundred individual sayings of Jesus with almost no narrative or biographical element. The majority appear in some form in one or more of the four “official” versions—with key exceptions.
I do think that the four that were approved preserve much of the best that eyewitnesses were able to record and transmit of the teachings. (And include some doubtful sayings or interpretations from the given evangelist’s hand). An informed guess I don’t pretend I can prove.
I’ve investigated several other surviving gospels in online versions but most were fragmentary or seemed quite silly, fanciful without much point beyond “Jesus is magic!”. I take no position on any supernatural or otherworldly part of the Bible, and don’t consider the yes-no-maybe of all that to be of primary importance. Instead, how we act, think, and treat one another looms much larger, though some doctrinaire believers emphasize abstract Christology, or saying the name “Jesus”.
I can see an lobsided but rather persuasive argument for demonizing just about any church, but not with the singular, focused vitriol you seem to reserve for Rome.
I don’t for an instant doubt that had I been born into another culture, I would probably “demonise” its cultural “church” (with the exception of Buddhism, which I respect, although I am in no sense a Buddhist). However, as to the Church of Rome, it is the one that has been committing atrocities against my ancestors for 2,000 years. The Protestant Churches are after all newcomers to the game. As to the gospels, how do we know there weren’t others that haven’t survived to the present day? Rome did try to eradicate “heretical” documents (and “heretical” people, for that matter). We are lucky that Nag Hammadi survived. In relation to the Church of Rome generally, have a read of a book called “The Bad Popes” by E.R. Chamberlain to see the foundation on which it is built.
That’s honest and fair enough, for this incarnation too. I could plausibly claim that my majority-Irish ancestors have suffered under both Catholicism and Anglicanism, but as a Canada-born dual citizen of parents who were hippies in my younger years, I’ve kinda been spared from the sense of personal injury I might otherwise feel.
While I hold a special reverence for Jesus, I have profound respect for the man who became known as Buddha, and greatly value, for example, the Dhammapada.
I’ll take a look at your reading recommendation. I suggest you look at Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh. Thanks for the lively, informative exchange. Happy Thanksgiving.
Thank you for your erudite comments. I had actually decided to end my subscription of UnHerd (in fact it expires today), but you have convinced me to renew. I will also buy the book to which you refer.
I respect Mr. Fraser’s ethical consistency in his opposition to taking life, whether one’s own or another’s, by private or state demand. Myself, I can’t get past a few key exceptions or qualifications, such as: 1). A vicious sadist like Ted Buddy, who escaped from prison and killed more women before he was re-captured 2) Someone in a condition of intense, hopeless physical pain who can only be kept alive by extreme interventions 3) Someone who is “brain dead”, especially for an extended time (like weeks or more) 4) A pregnancy that is the result of incest or rape, or endangers the life of the mother.
But I don’t know why he calls his opponents “humanists”, or seem to use that term with blanket contempt. There were and are such a thing as Christian humanists, from at least Erasmus onward. And the cold, calculating model of Parris is more aptly called inhuman.
We are not allowed any choice whatsoever as to the circumstances of entering this world
Why and by whom should we be denied the choice of when we wish to leave it ?
Truly I do not understand where this idea -or the evidence for it – comes from: that there are hordes of people queuing up to dispatch their disabled or elderly relatives and just waiting for the chance to be allowed to do it. The principle of assisted dying as currently proposed is to allow individuals to make their OWN choice about when they’ve had enough suffering, not to encourage others to make that decision. Unfortunately, in higher income countries a downside of modern medicine is that elderly people cannot die ‘of natural causes’ anymore. We go on, and on, and on… and not everyone welcomes that.
As for ‘DIY please’, it’s not that easy once you’re sick. I have an elderly relative who has tried several times. He failed and ended up being sectioned. He has lived the last ten years in a miasma of helplessness and despair. No-one can help him. My mother, a woman who loved life and never asked for help if she could avoid it, begged me to help her die once diagnosed with pancreatic cancer: she knew what was coming, and indeed, it was utter hell for her. For months. Her long death was miserable and undignified and she hated every minute of it. Imagine if we decided that from now on, vets were not allowed to euthanise sick and dying animals and ‘nature’ (or god?) must just be allowed to take its course. The country would be awash with cries of horror and disgust at the ‘inhumanity’ of allowing beloved pets to suffer. Yet we tolerate this for our own human loved ones?
We live in a culture where we are allowed to debate what in many cultures is unthinkable. We may, perhaps, soon be allowed to introduce a new way to alleviate suffering in the most extreme cases and for those who want it. That is something to be profoundly grateful for. No system is going to be foolproof, and there will be abuses. That’s a reason to work very hard on creating the best possible processes, not for doing nothing. And if you think that we should just wait till palliative medicine is so effective and well-resourced that suffering is eliminated, good luck with that. I have never been so disappointed in my life as I was as my mother’s so-called professional palliative care, which took over from me when I knew I was beaten.
The author is suggesting that people should not be able to make “bad” choices about their lives. Bad meaning decisions he disagrees with.
Yes. He is also coming from a “suffering is part of life, and is thus good” perspective.
Suicide is the act of taking your own life. Assisted suicide or euthanasia is homicide of some degree.
Matthew Parris has done us a service by indicating where ‘enlightened’ public opinion will go now. For me it amounted to the strongest argument against legalising assisted suicide. We need to save as soon as we earn so we can afford our own age care.
And who is going to run it ?
It is an absolute condition of being a professional that you never act when there is a conflict of interest.
The NHS – being pushed for resources – has an interest in reducing demand – ie killing people. So it cannot act in assisting dying.
Government, like all large organisations, is not a person, so has no human qualities like kindness or empathy.