The Problem with Assisted Suicide

 

On 29 November, Members of Parliament will once again discuss the question of assisted suicide. This will be, since 1936, Parliament’s thirteenth attempt to change the law. On each of the twelve occasions so far attempts to legalise assisted suicide have been decisively rejected.

In the Bible, Elijah, in a moment of depression, prayed “I have had enough, take my life” (1 Kings 19.4). Solomon, in his weary search for meaning, reached a point where everything seemed pointless and he “hated life” (Ecclesiastes 2.17). And Jonah got so ticked off with God that he ranted “It would be better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4.8). 

I would think, in our very worst moments, if we’re honest, many of us may have wondered about suicide, but most of us dismiss the idea very quickly. Knowing we are at the end of life, and feeling that the end will be protracted and undignified, it must be tempting to entertain the thought a bit longer.

But as a Christian who believes in the sanctity of human life, made in God’s image, from the womb to the deathbed, and being married to a hospice nurse, it won’t surprise you to read that legalising assisted suicide is a move I think our legislators should continue to resist.

My thoughts on all this were further stimulated recently by a friend of ours called Julie who lives in Derbyshire, and who has been a doctor for four decades. I share below in italics with her permission a slightly edited version of a letter she sent to her MP last week, urging her to vote against the proposed change to the law.

Thank you for your willingness to serve us in Parliament. I am one of your constituents and am also a recently retired GP. I am writing to urge you to please vote against Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Suicide bill on Friday 29 November.

I see a parallel between those pushing for the legalisation of assisted suicide and those who support the right to bear arms in the USA. The gun lobby justifies its position by viewing the world as being divided into goodies and baddies. (They of course are the goodies and they have a right to protect themselves against the baddies).

But the likelihood of using your legally held handgun in the USA to commit suicide, or to kill a loved one in an alcohol fuelled argument, or for a family member to die by accidental discharge, are massively higher than the likelihood that you will just happen to be holding your gun when you need to deter a stranger who is determined to harm you. So the reasons given for the right to bear arms, based on a rare possibility, ignore the facts that guns cause more harm than good to those who own them. The reason for this is that the world is not divided into goodies and baddies. We all have a dark side. And in my darkest moments it would really not have been a good idea, for my own sake or for the sake of others, for me to own a gun.

Likewise with assisted suicide. The rare possibility is that somebody may face an unpleasant end without good symptom control. That is very unusual, thanks to our excellent palliative care network, but it does happen. There are some awful ways to die, and I have seen them.

But the reality is that the right to die would rapidly creep towards a duty to die. The boundaries would move, and we have our heads in sand if we say that they would not. They have moved everywhere else and they would move here.

Furthermore, legalising assisted suicide would undermine the drive to reduce all other forms of suicide and distract from the need to make the best palliative care available to all who need it.

I spent 40 years training and working as a frontline healthcare worker for the NHS. We see the whole spectrum of human nature and experience, because everybody gets sick and everybody dies. I have seen both the worst and the best in human nature. And the very finest and most noble thing it has been my privilege to witness in human nature is people’s capacity to love and support one another in their suffering.

As well as my professional experience, I also have significant personal experience of caring for loved ones who are vulnerable because of substance misuse, enduring mental health problems, dementia, old age, physical frailty and progressive and incurable disease. The law is a blunt instrument. End of life care is no place for blunt instruments. We need the law to protect us, not to give us a gun.

Julie says it so well.

While thousands die peacefully and naturally with their pain under control in the UK every year, between 40 and 50 people travel abroad annually to put an end to their own lives in countries where assisted suicide is legal. If this bill is passed, I have no doubt that the numbers of those opting to end their lives, perhaps because they ‘don’t want to be a burden’, would sharply increase. 

Solomon, Elijah and Jonah all had a change of heart and decided in the end to choose life. How many more of our fellow countrymen and women would choose death if there were an easy route to end it all when they were at their lowest ebb?

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10.10).

First published on King's Church Darlington website blog.