The battle to legalise assisted dying has begun again

It’s horrifying to read that a disabled pensioner has asked his doctor to end his life because he hasn’t enough money to buy food and pay his rent. Former lorry driver, Les Landry, has diabetes and epilepsy and lives with a service dog. He was managing well on his disability payments until he reached the age of 65 and was moved from disability benefit to a benefits plan for older people, which pays less. Even more horrifying is that a doctor has agreed, knowing that the reason for Les’s request is poverty. Now all Les has to do is get a second doctor’s signature and 90 days later he will be killed. It’s called assisted suicide, but it literally means killing by a doctor. This didn’t happen in Britain: the disabled pensioner lives in Canada, and is one of many who are being offered assisted dying instead of help to live, but it could easily be the case here in the not too distant future if the current new push by MPs to legalise assisted suicide succeeds.

A Bill to remove protections for vulnerable people is currently before the Scottish Parliament, and Westminster’s Health and Social Care Select Committee has called for evidence on assisted suicide in England and Wales. Katie Breckenridge, research associate at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics has challenged arguments from supporters of MSP Liam McArthur’s Bill that it would lift ‘the burden of care’ from the family, “benefit the economy” by not ‘wasting resources’ on nursing the dying, and increase organs available for transplantation. The terminology is deeply disturbing, and Ms Brekenridge said, ‘This mindset of treating ailing persons as economic burdens and as optimal sources for organic materials dehumanises and could even coerce them. Assisted suicide is presented as a means of ‘dying with dignity’ but there is no dignity in surrendering to an early, coerced death.’ (The Times 2 January 2023).

The Westminster Social Care Select Committee’s is led by MP Steve Brine. On the Committee’s webpage[i] is his statement saying that the ‘vexed’ question has been raised in Parliament many times but that there is now now real-world evidence to look at.’ Some form of assisted dying or assisted suicide is legal in at least 27 jurisdictions worldwide. It became legal in Canada in 2015; the Netherlands in 2001; Oregon in the United States in 1994. So it is time to review the actual impact of changes in the law in other countries in order to inform the debate in our own. Our inquiry will examine that evidence, hearing from all sides of the debate. The government has stated it is for parliament to decide on the issue so our purpose is to inform parliament in any debate.

‘I will be approaching this inquiry with compassion and an open mind as I know will my select committee colleagues. We want to hear from campaigners, members of the medical profession and members of the public and we will look at the moral, ethical and practical concerns raised in a way that is informed by actual evidence.’

If the committee genuinely considers the evidence they will find it alarming. Where assisted dying has been legalised its scope has expanded quickly, well beyond its original limits. There were warnings about this the Canadian government was considering it in 2015, but the Canadian Supreme Court dismissed concerns about a ‘slippery slope’ saying it was a fallacy. This was despite the evidence of rapidly rising figures in Belgium, in the Netherlands, and in Oregon. Then Canada ruled that to limit euthanasia access to those who deaths were ‘reasonably foreseeable’ discriminated against those whose illnesses were not terminal, because euthanasia was, according to the courts, a human right.

Now the Canadian Parliament is considering whether disabled children could be euthanised by doctors. In other words, legalised infanticide. Alex Schardenberg of the euthanasia Prevention Coalition said that ‘unless there is a profound change in the medical culture in Canada so that patients are seen as people to be healed, rather than have their lives ended, it seems likely that Canada will go the same way [as the Netherlands] and start euthanising their own children.’

Euthanasia in Canada will not be limited to physical illness: from next year mental illness will become a qualifying condition. Writing in the Telegraph, Assistant Professor of International Relations and International Law at Leiden University, Yuan Li Zu said, ‘Ever since it burst into the public consciousness almost a year ago, details of Canada’s assisted suicide scheme, known euphemistically as MAiD — medical assistance in dying — have shocked and astonished people around the world in equal measure. Harrowing tales of disabled poor people choosing to end their lives because they could not survive on paltry benefits have since proliferated, as have horror stories of doctors and bureaucrats trying to pressure patients into ending their lives.’

We may think that this could never happen here. But Yuan Li Zu adds that our circumstances and culture are not dissimilar to Canada’s, with an overextended healthcare system, a social care system that is perpetually near collapse, a strained exchequer, and an ageing population.

Chillingly,’ he believes that the cultural centrality of the National Health Service may make the UK an even more fertile ground for abuse. ‘Protect the NHS’ was a powerful unifying message during COVID, but it is not difficult to see how a society in which such a slogan kept people from receiving cancer treatment might also be fertile ground for euthanasia-related abuse.’

But Christians this little country know the importance of speaking up and the power of prayer. The chairman of the select committee currently at work in Parliament has said that he wants to hear from campaigners, members of the medical profession and members of the public and we will look at the moral, ethical and practical concerns raised in a way that is informed by actual evidence.’

It’s not difficult to contact our MPs by email, and their addresses are available online. More information and guidance on responding directly to the Committee is given here and evidence should be submitted by 20 January 2023.

Let’s pray, too, and encourage our church groups to pray. We are made in the image of God, and know the value of each human being.

[i] ‘https://committees.parliament....