October 4, 2024 - 10:30am
Yet another British bill on assisted dying is to be brought forward, and granted a free vote. Is this endless, insistent pressure for legal suicide the end of Christian civilisation, as some have warned? Perhaps, though, in the Anglosphere at least it’s better understood as a contest between two sets of competing Christian values. And while it gives me no pleasure to report this, I suspect its eventual legalisation is inevitable: for it is the logical terminus for our current transnational technological order.
Many Christians oppose the measure on the grounds of Christian obligation to protect vulnerable life, as for example when Anglican bishops helped defeat a euthanasia bill in 2006. But excepting Britain’s minority of Roman Catholics, adherence to beliefs on our duty to dependent others and the sanctity of life is already complicated here by broad public acceptance of legal abortion. And in this context we shouldn’t be surprised to see other Christian-legacy values mobilised in support of euthanasia. Defending the bill, Kit Malthouse used heavily Christian-coded terms such as “peace”, “dignity”, and “compassion”, while supporters of assisted dying such as Esther Rantzen tend to emphasise choice: a liberal frame that draws on 1500 years of Christian thinking on individual autonomy prior to modernity.
Of course, even within the secular frame the concerns over tension between “choice” and coercion are well-rehearsed, as are those over the negative impact it might have on our willingness to protect dependent, vulnerable life. Recently, palliative care doctors and even Labour’s own Health Secretary have voiced such worries, with Wes Streeting warning last month that UK palliative care isn’t good enough for assisted dying to be offered as an alternative. Given current poor provision, he suggested, patients would be “coerced” into ending their lives as the least miserable option.
Yet we can expect this bill to come back again and again until it’s passed — because the logic of technological post-modernity requires it. This doesn’t just apply in the Christian-legacy West, but wherever a country sports an inverted population pyramid. And this is almost everywhere now: the causality is contested, but something about high-tech market society, whether Christian or otherwise, exerts such relentless downward pressure on fertility that global populations are set to shrink almost everywhere, with far-reaching cultural, political, and economic consequences.
And we’re already seeing battles over possible policy solutions. Productivity gains? Robots? Immigrants? Paying people to have more babies? All these have trade-offs and none addresses the scale of the crash. Thus, quietly and usually without any explicit links to the fertility crisis, wherever the baby bust is beginning to bite calls are growing louder for the “problem” to be fixed at the wide rather than the narrow end of the pyramid.
This exists in bleak meme form in millennial jokes about “Day of the Pillow”, a proposed mass-smothering event conducted against their over-numerous Boomer elders. Far more than de-Christianisation, if support for euthanasia is growing this is likely because it’s what Day of the Pillow looks like, once migrated from dark internet jokes into practical policy. This becomes clear once you realise that every polity where the demographic pinch prevails is making the same proposals. For example, since 2020 the call has been raised in China, Japan, and India as well as the West.
From a perspective that views human life as sacred, this looks horrific. But it is a logical endpoint for a technological order whose inorganic growth is in important ways parasitic on the organic kind: exploiting the natural world, for instance, or instrumentalising “human resources” even as it affords women more social status for literally anything other than creating and nurturing those “resources”. And when no effort to rein in this exploitative, anti-life nature seems to have succeeded yet, perhaps the only way out is through. So we can maybe take a crumb of comfort from the likelihood that whatever society survives this now self-devouring culture of death will have done so by refusing its paradigm, and choosing life instead.
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SubscribeThis is about choice and most of the public strongly support it, notwithstanding the gaslighting from tne so-called ” pro life” lobby. It will pass and just like with abortion it will be extended amd part of the settled will, only t be contested by a handful of theistic and/ curmudgeonly cranks. Harrington is right though that it is the end point of a post Christian technological civilisation and yes, robots rather than births will be used to solve the labour shortage problem and will hopefully substitute for immigrants
‘Choice’
“This is about choice”.
You really haven’t read anything about what’s going on in Canada have you?
“Paralympian trying to get wheelchair ramp says Veterans Affairs employee offered her assisted dying”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/paralympian-trying-to-get-wheelchair-ramp-says-veterans-affairs-employee-offered-her-assisted-dying-1.6179325
Speaking as a hale and hearty Canadian in his late fifties, I’m encouraged to see that, by the time I need it, I’ll be able to force a dignified, painless exit rather than being trapped in medical purgatory. This IS about choice. My choice, and a-holes like you not being able to imprison me in my body for longer than I choose.
Congratulations on having everything figured out. You can be happy and dance in the street about it, and never mind anyone else who might think differently or become affected by your ‘choice’, either directly (relations, friends,medical staff) or indirectly by changing attitudes. You will know about the latter since you live in Trudeau’s Canada, where death is offered instead of treatment.
How is his freely exercised choice in any way restricting your choices or freedoms ? You are still free to believe and do whatever you want.
Your argument is starting to sound like you don’t really believe in individual liberty and personal responsiblity – things which are the very foundation of Western civislisation and will outlive religious beliefs.
There need to be very good reasons for us to allow a minority group of people to have a veto over the free choices of others when those choices have no negative consequences for them.
Those who are arguing for no change risk at the same time arguing for the tyrrany of a minority.
I see the unquiet ghost of John Locke at this feast.
‘Individual liberty and personal responsibility’ of the sort that you suggest are civilisationally foundational, are not perhaps as old as you think.
None of us belong to ourselves. We are indissolubly bound together thorugh ties of love, duty and obligation.
Every action we take, every word we speak, every deed we assent to, must be put out through the test of – “what harm could this do to those very much weaker than myself”.
I think when exploring a question such as this, which deals with that moment when every question ‘is sealed up in rest’ we should extend to each other the benefit of good faith.
You say you are a hale and hearty man and I am glad you have such courage in facing the inevitable end. Others will not and it is quite conceivable that they will now be made to feel selfish for not having your natural courage.
If you want a window into an earlier Pre-Lockean understanding of the limits of selfhood, from a master explorer of he subjective, I would suggest meditating on these lines of John Donne:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
Sorry, but “no man is an island” forms no part of the English/UK legal system and never has. And this whole discussion is about changes to the legal system. Not morality, feelings or religious beliefs.
I am under no legal obligation to consider the feelings of my [adult] relatives for any decision I make. Just as I am not responsible for their actions or debts. And nor should I be.
We could extend your argument about assisted dying to suicide. At one point this used to be a criminal offence in the UK. You could equally well argue that anyone committing suicide is doing harm to his or her relatives. I struggle to see any difference between that and someone choosing assisted dying in this respect. So are you in favour of recriminalising suicide ?
Let’s try to have an intellectually honest discussion here.
I made no comment about my personal health or courage. Whyever do you make such things up ?
(subsequently edited)
I beg your pardon, I confused your message with the previous poster, Adam Grant, who referred to himself as ‘hale and hearty’.
You pose a fascinating question when you ask if I would support re-criminalising suicide. It is something I will need to think about as I hadn’t considered that angle.
My immediate response, bad form as it is to answer a question with a question, would be – Would you ever attempt to intervene in a suicide attempt if you saw someone leaning over a bridge?
Or what you also consider that to be interfering in an individuals free choice?
Thanks. And thanks for replying (doesn’t always happen here).
Still can’t agree, but deservers an uptick for honesty and consistency.
Thank you however you may also notice I have since edited my response.
I replied in some haste and your question has really given me pause for thought.
Please excuse me having edited my reply, I hope you don’t see it as an evasion.
Not at all.
And yes (it’s an excellent question), if I saw someone trying to jump off a bridge, I think I would try to help (and assume that my interference was help). That’s instinctive for most of us I think. But I don’t think that makes suicide criminal or wrong – nor that I should be taking the decision. It’s just sad in most cases.
The latter. I might talk to them to see if there was anything they wanted to say (messages to be passed on, etc), but I would otherwise respect their choice.
You must be very lonely in your solitary existence on your island of I,Me,Mine.
We’ll be sorry to see you go.
Reports from Canada are exagerrated. Nobody is being forced no matter what you wish to believe
No, they’re just having medical care denied, and facing pressure from Gov’t officials to go ahead abd die and save the state the cost.
Most of the public support the most crass and stupid things. The media tells us what we like and who we admire and why. They just.soak it up and parrot it out.
Two competing sets of Christian values?
Your insistence that “choice” is a Christian viewpoint when it comes to this topic: uuuhh, what? That’s so off the mark. The wish to choose the date and time of your own death is clearly rooted in pride – a lack of faith in God and His providence. Suicide has always been considered a sin. Sure, there might be self-professing Christians who take a different view – but with all due respect, their position is heretical.
The first viewpoint you mentioned: the one about the sanctity of life, opposing a culture of death: that’s the Christian viewpoint. The worship of “choice”, by which people mean “death”, is of the evil one, however attractive its disguise.
“You can make many plans, but the LORD’s purpose will prevail.” Proverbs 19:21
Oh come on don’t be so obtuse. Mary is clearly not in favour of euthanasia but she is right that the arguments in favour of it (““peace”, “dignity”, and “compassion”) are all eminently Christian values, she’s also right that the legislation will inevitably pass, and she’s right that this current age will also pass away, which we can be thankful for.
I never said Mary was in favour.
Besides humility, the chief virtue is discernment. That is, the wisdom to know when one value is out of balance with the others. All this talk of peace, dignity, and compassion (without repentance, faith, and hope in the life of the world to come) is exactly that: a cynical contortion of virtue into vice. This is the way of the evil one.
Christ teaches us to avoid this, to take heed that none deceive us, to be wise as serpents as innocent as doves. You can’t take Christian values in isolation from each other. Nor can you view them apart from the metaphysics, epistemology, and all other aspects of the faith.
I’m not a Christian, but I find your words very wise. Thanks.
I think Mary was suggesting that the language is Christian, rather than the values themselves.
I thought that was an important distinction that she was drawing,
The Reformation happened.
Essentially a shift towards individual or collective autonomy/ ‘choice’, within Christianity.
And before that, the Great Schism. The Pope was the first Protestant.
I agree, the disunity of the Body of Christ has led to most undesirable consequences. Never too late to return to Holy Orthodoxy.
I have no problem if Christians do not choose to avail themselves of VAD. However they are now a minority in many Western countries, including the UK (or at the very least, England and Wales). Why should they be able to stop the rest of us availing ourselves of it?
On a personal level, I fear that if assisted dying becomes an option, I will take it, and my family will be devastated. I’m not terminally ill, but I live with constant pain, and every time the pain flares, I wish for it all to be over. In a weak moment such as that, I could easily opt for assisted death rather than face the inevitable struggle of trying to get help with pain management.
I’m sure there are many others like me, who would opt for assisted death in a moment of crisis IF it were available and state-approved, but who could continue to find life worth living with a bit of support through the crisis.
And we all know hat once legalised, assisted dying won’t be restricted to those with a terminal diagnosis, because there will be pressure from those with long term intractable suffering, to have it made available to them.
And not long after that, elderly people will choose it rather than see their family’s inheritance spent on care home fees.
It will never be a truly free choice.
And not long after that, elderly people will choose it rather than see their family’s inheritance spent on care home fees.
I would definitely prefer to die and have something to leave my children tha. Have it swallowed up in care home fees.
My mother suffered from dementia for several years and had no quality of life whatsoever. I dread that fate more than anything and if I was diagnosed I would opt for euthanasia whilst in the early stages.
I’m sorry to hear of your mother’s suffering, and your fear of the same. When I wrote that, I wasn’t thinking of dementia in particular, but more the general decline and frailty that might make a shift to a care home necessary, and the vast cost to be borne.
Nor was I arguing against the legalisation of assisted suicide; rather, just pointing out some of the concerns I have about it. I would not want you to be denied a choice you wish to have available. However, some people may exercise that choice because of suffering or anxiety that could be alleviated, if society wished. I fear many people would not be making a free choice, but a largely compelled one, which is no choice at all. And I appreciate that being denied this choice is also an affront to ones autonomy.
My father died slowly via dementia. Every time we visited him in his last year, was like going to his funeral anew. I will not be putting my family through this.
I am so terribly, terribly sorry for your suffering and will be holding you in my prayers.
What started out as a genuine moral and ethical dilemma set against very particular circumstances that can include pain and suffering will end up as something else entirely. The only consolation I get from the road the world is on that many of those who are promoting assisted dying will themselves be killed off, without their permission, by the very system they are creating.
I assume you are in the UK. In many places in the world (including the one I live in), the “weak moment” could end with getting a gun out of the gun cabinet, and causing it to “go band” while pointed in the right direction.
True, and it is a much quicker decision at this point. The OP makes it seem like you can have a weak moment, then instantly end up at a hospital in a bed receiving a life ending shot.
In reality, you have a weak moment, consider ending it, maybe even get in the car, but then you realize that you have to get to the hospital, probably sign a bunch of paperwork, probably have a family member also sign off (or whatever process they end up on), and then you turn off the car and go back inside.
Free is a polysemic word, and “free” does not always mean “free of charge”. The economic pressure for “end of life assistance” will be too overwhelming for most elders. This might be our collective choice.
Like my hero and role model Falstaff or come to that Flashman I CHOOSE LIFE.
I didn’t mean to down vote that,
Choose life – very Renton
Also very Moses. Deuteronomy 30:19
“Choose” is the key. I would not presume to interfere with your choice. I would hope you wouldn’t interfere if I CHOOSE DEATH.
This is a very hard dilemma. Simplistic views should be ignored.
If I am dying from a painful incurable ailment, I can understand the wish to hasten death.
Conversely there is a real risk of it being used to hasten death – the utilitarian argument. I am unproductive and a drain on public services as well as my family, so end it.
I understand it is ‘ethical’ to increase pain relief even if it kills the patient. Does this offer a solution? I imagine for some conditions but not all.
Research on the experience of other countries can help. Care must be taken that it is not ‘euthanasia on demand’ as it is with abortion (although keep that out at the moment).
Where does the utilitarian argument end? Mentally handicapped and mentally ill people are unproductive and drains on society and their families. People on the dole are unproductive drains on society, and often their families. Most migrants are unproductive drains on society. Violent, anti-social 12-16 y.o.s. are a drain, and we know 80% of them are headed for destructive lives.
Quite frankly, I’d much rather put down violent criminals and used the money saved to keep granny alive.
“….and used the money saved to keep granny alive“. Even if she doesn’t want to be “kept alive”?
One more time, pse differentiate assisted suicide from euthanasia. The former is a way to help those wanting to commit suicide, generally for medical reasons, linked to unbearable suffering. The interested person drinks him/herself the, generally, pentobarbital offered. The latter is the authorisation for a third-party to inject a lethal substance to a suffering person. Active euthanasia is legal in 5 countries, among them Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, not Switzerland.
Second, the present evolution of the public opinion hasn’t anything to do with hi-tech technology : the pentobarbital has been on hand for decades.
Third, even if my country, Switzerland is seen as the paradise of assisted suicide, the full of common sense system adopted over here by most of the institutions offering the service is a multi-stage process with large discussions with the “candidate”, check of his/her mental capabilty and prescrption of the drug by a certified doctor.
And, to conclude : now, after decades of assisted suicide here, even if the trend iin the nature of assisted suicide is objectively slowly increasing, no, repeat no, serious abuse of the system by greedy family or lax organisation has ever been reported to the justice.
It pains me hugely seeing this discussion endlessly continuing with no apparent understanding of the difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia. Why are so many otherwise intelligent people seemingly ignorant of this – or just refusing to accept the difference ?
There are always supposed to be safeguards. Where assisted suicide has been legalised, decriminalised, or effectively permitted, then, with little or no further legislation, it has been extended to conditions such as chronic pain, which I have; limited mobility, which I have; clinical depression, which I have; and material poverty, to which I am not a stranger, as we disabled people disproportionately are not.
The legalisation of assisted suicide would give to a High Court judge in the Family Division such power over life and death as no judge in this country had enjoyed since the abolition of capital punishment. My paternal grandfather was born before such working-class men could vote. My maternal ancestors included African slaves, Indian indentured labourers, and Chinese coolies. We who come off the lower orders and the lesser breeds, and especially those of us who are disabled, know perfectly well who would be euthanised, and how, and why.
Even if we had made it past the industrial scale abortion that disproportionately targeted us, then we would face euthanasia as yet another lethal weapon in the deadly armoury of our mortal enemies, alongside their wars, alongside their self-indulgent refusal to enforce the drug laws, alongside police brutality and other street violence, alongside the numerous life-shortening consequences of economic inequality, and alongside the restoration of the death penalty, which is more likely than it has been in two generations under a Prime Minister who was a former Director of Public Prosecutions.
All this, and the needle, too? This is class and race war, and we must fight to the death. That death must not be ours, but the death of the global capitalist system. Having subjected itself to that system to a unique extent, Britain is uniquely placed to overthrow it, and to replace it with an order founded on the absolute sanctity of each individual human life from the point of fertilisation to the point of natural death.
That foundation would and could be secured only by absolute fidelity to the only global institution that was irrevocably committed to that principle, including the full range of its economic, social, cultural and political implications. People tell me not to put this in. But Acts 4:20.
I think you can see from my comment above that it can be challenging for we disabled people to value our own lives, surrounded as we are by utilitarian ideologies. Thank you for your resounding words.
I belong to a different faith, but I do feel heartened by your reminder of “the absolute sanctity of human life”. If this were more widely accepted, and reflected in the conduct of those engaging in sex, there would be far fewer abortions. I would like a world where everyone considered the possibility of pregnancy and their responsibilities, before impulsively jumping into bed.
Thank you so much for this.
“I would like a world where everyone considered the possibility of pregnancy and their responsibilities, before impulsively jumping into bed“. If you ever find that world, send us a postcard from there.
We are all guilty of muddled thinking. People who wholeheartedly approve of abortion on demand cannot oppose euthanasia as both dealt with the ending of life at either end of the human spectrum.
In many areas of modern medicine and healthcare, life is artificially prolonged. That is, without them, people would die naturally much earlier. The health system is expected to preserve life at almost all costs rather than have the patient die.
This leads to the rather tragic situation of many elderly people. I might add here that old people can remember what it was like to be young but young people cannot know what it is like to be old. Many old people look forward to death as they find life a burden, know they are a burden and want to be released. That might not be palatable to the young but it is the case.
Finally, anyone who says that a person in the final stages of dementia is happy and is not a walking tragedy is deluded. All dignity is stripped from them and society mostly reverses rapidly away from such people, putting them into homes, expecting others to care for them on a pittance and complaining of the cost. As for the family’s suffering, especially the husband or wife, that cannot be computed. It is both a living nightmare and a constant bereavement. Years ago, these folk would have passed away much earlier.
The Christian view regarding this should be that everything should be done out of love as God is love. So it really cannot be used as part of a legal argument. I suspect that if a Bill is passed, the overwhelming majority of cases will be carried out for the right reasons but there are bound to be some that are not. We have to decide if that is an acceptable risk just as we did with abortion.
Beautifully put and my thoughts exactly.
It will be NHS policy to kill old folk soon
Given that it already has been (look up the Liverpool Care Pathway) I am sure the NHS will take to “assisted dying” with gusto.
Much of this discussion is beside the point. I have a dread of not living but of merely existing. Assisted dying should rely on the living will – the choice made by an individual whilst still retaining the mental capacity to comprehend, and before that person reaches the point of crisis caused by pain. As for all these in care homes, who suffer from dementia – they are not living but existing. In the same way that it is a solecism to die over the age of 21 without leaving a will; so it should also be a solecism to suffer from dementia without having made a living will.
Can those with dementia actually give “informed consent”. I would have thought not but, as Canada has shown, it is perfectly acceptable to hold them down while knocking them off.
I’m strongly against this, partly because of what has happened in Canada. But I think the chances of UK MPs voting in favour of it are 100%.
The start of an increasingly slippery slope leading to authoritarian murder. Overly dramatic? So thought many European Jews in the 1930s; it was unthinkable. This initial driver of the murders may not be the same, but the end result is predictable.
As someone who would have be classified as ‘mentally feeble’ in 1930s Germany, despite my intellectual capacity being anything but, I am 100% opposed to involving state bureaucracy in matters like this. If the state shouldn’t have a say in whether or not you reproduce, it shouldn’t have a say in whether or not you die. Such ‘compassion’ will always be used as a pretense to ‘prune’ the ‘undesirables’ from society, no matter how you dress it up.
A thought-provoking article. My objections to euthanasia are based on my Christian faith, but I would have thought that the prospect of assisted dying being administered by “our” NHS would alarm many people who support it in principle.
The process isn’t at the cutting edge of medicine. Vets undertake it every day of the week.
Perhaps you shoul read the other Unherd article “The painful truth about assisted dying”.
What may be licenced for animals is unlikely to be licenced for people.
“Yet we can expect this bill to come back again and again until it’s passed“. That is presumably because the people generally are in favour of it.
A poll does not actually indicate that “most people are in favour of it” just that a small sample are.
I seem to remeber that “most people” wanted to stay in the EU.
Post-Christian moral relativist west in loss of spritual bearings shocka.
The baby bust is not a recent phenomenon in most Western countries. How about the early 1970’s.
The populations in many of those same countries grew because of a degree of momentum with the baby boomers passing through, and , some of them even having babies. To this add immigration, especially in the settler anglo countries.
Without these qualifications the late 1930’s predictions of population decline might have long been the norm in places such as the UK.
Cripes! Reading the comments here is enough to make one exit this mortal coil.