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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.
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SubscribeOn 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.
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.
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
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).
This 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.
We’ll be sorry to see you go.