THE defeat of the assisted-dying Bill in the House of Lords has left me with a lot of questions, chief of which is to discern the appropriate Christian response to the continuing demand: this issue is not going away. Those in favour of assisted dying demand autonomy — my body, my choice — while those against often argue that we are not wholly autonomous beings: we belong to one another and to God.
Yet, there could be unselfish, even Christian, reasons that I might choose a medically assisted death. It could spare those caring for me; it could even free up a much-needed NHS bed. These are not unreasonable arguments. If those in favour of medically assisted death had realised that good Christian people might think this way, they might have been successful; but, foolishly, they chose to castigate all opposition as “religious”. My hesitant opposition to the Bill recognises the moral power of the argument from unselfishness. Could I, faced with the choice of an assisted death, cling on at the expense of others?
I continue to be opposed to assisted dying because I am concerned about what the practice would do to those who would administer assisted death. I am not thinking about Harold Shipman here, though there are, no doubt, a tiny few in the medical profession who could abuse the power entrusted to them. What concerns me more is what it might do over time to medical professionals to administer death and, in doing so, break habitually the Hippocratic oath to do no harm.
It is a similar argument to one of those that prevailed over capital punishment: what does it do to the executioner? I remember the biography of Albert Pierrepoint, the last British hangman, who killed more than 400 people who had been sentenced to death by the State. He took real pride in his ability to dispatch the condemned quickly, efficiently, and with, as he saw it, minimal suffering. But he concluded, in the end, that the main argument in favour of the death penalty — that it was a deterrent — was simply wrong, and he regretted his part in the practice.
The burden of proof must be that assisted dying relieves more suffering than it causes, and this is excruciatingly difficult to demonstrate. If it is eventually passed into law, there will be assisted deaths that go wrong. There will be relations and friends who regret their support; and, yes, there will be the pressure to extend the practice. I can well imagine a time when medicalised death on demand could be available, say, to all over-75s.
As a Christian, death means being conformed to Christ in his death and in the hope of sharing in his resurrection. In Wesley’s words, “I am no longer my own, but yours.” For Christians, whether they are for or against assisted dying, the issue is how that principle is expressed in law.
