EDITORIAL: All who value the sanctity of life must oppose this radical and destructive change in the law

Today, MPs at Westminster vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill which would allow people in England and Wales to be helped to commit suicide.

It would be a radical and destructive change in the law, fundamentally altering our collective view of suicide and the value of human life. It is for this reason that the Catholic Herald is urging all our readers in England and Wales (Scotland decides separately) to contact their MPs to urge them to oppose this measure. We urge our readers who are themselves parliamentarians to speak against it and to vote against it.

Under the provisions of the Bill, doctors would be authorised to provide the terminally ill with drugs to enable them to end their lives and in cases where they are physically unable to do so, to “assist” the final act – by raising the glass to the patient’s mouth or, if lethal injection is eventually allowed, by pressing the syringe. Thus, doctors will kill their patients legally, thereby denying the most fundamental principle of medicine: do no harm. Doctors will also be authorised to raise the subject of suicide with their patients thereby lending the option medical and ethical credibility.

The Bill, according to Kim Leadbeater MP who introduced it, has “the strictest safeguards anywhere in the world”. In theory it seems stringent. Those who seek help to die must be over 18 and have been registered with a GP for at least a year; have the mental capacity to make the choice and be deemed to have expressed “a clear, settled and informed wish” to die; satisfy two independent doctors that they are eligible, with a week between each assessment; make two separate declarations of their wish to die, that are witnessed and signed; and be expected to die within six months.

Under the proposals, a High Court judge would have to rule each time a person makes a request to end their life. A patient would then have to wait 14 days before acting.

Yet none of these safeguards holds water. It is in practice very difficult to establish that a patient has six months or less to live; there are countless instances where individuals survive for months and years longer than their diagnosis. A terminal condition can be variously interpreted. Diabetes can be a terminal condition if those who have it do not take insulin. Anorexia can be terminal if sufferers refuse to eat.

And how long would it take for a judicial challenge to the principle that only the terminally ill should be allowed to die? It would be a short step to extending the principle to those enduring unbearable suffering; people with Parkinson’s disease have already indicated that they might challenge the Bill’s restrictions. Unbearable suffering can be as mental as it is physical, so, people who are profoundly depressed would thus be eligible. It is possible even now to see exactly where this Bill will lead. But even as it stands it is dangerous.

Two doctors separately would be required to assert the eligibility of the patient for assisted suicide. But not every doctor is trained to detect coercive control. Not every doctor has the time, will or patience to determine if families are exercising subtle influence on an elderly relative to suggest that he or she is burdensome. These suggestions need not be overt, but they could very easily make a vulnerable, sick and elderly individual feel that their family and society would be better off without them. As for judicial oversight, it is impossible for a judge to do anything more than satisfy himself that the doctors concerned have gone through the motions laid down in the Bill. The judicial system is already dangerously overstretched. There is simply no scope in the family courts right now for oversight to be meaningful.

This Bill, if enacted, would present people who are ill, in pain and dependent with a choice that they never had before: whether to be helped to commit suicide. Assisted dying is a misnomer; we shall all die, whether assisted or not. This is about assisted suicide.

Of course, the Bill’s supporters talk about choice. But this is to assume that choice is atomised; that the choices of individuals do not change the way everyone regards matters of life and death. Our social and medical ethics will be fundamentally altered if this Bill passes – for everyone, not just for the individuals who take up the death option. The sick will be faced with the choice, not of care options, but of whether to live or die. How long before the very sick feel that their continued existence in itself is a selfish act?

Of course people are fearful of suffering, even if they are not terminally ill. Yet their options can at least be expanded by the uniform provision of hospice and palliative care; a genuine choice of care options is preferable to the choice of life or death

Such a choice as proposed by this Bill is a fundamental rejection of the principle that we owe our lives to God. As Cardinal Nichols wrote in a letter to his diocese: “being forgetful of God belittles our humanity. The questions raised by this Bill go to the very heart of how we understand ourselves, our lives, our humanity…Our life flows from God and will find its fulfilment in God…To ignore or deny this truth is to separate our humanity from its origins and purpose.”

But we do not confine our appeal to Catholics but to all men and women of goodwill, who value the sanctity of life, who seek to protect the vulnerable, who wish to relieve suffering in other ways than by offering death to the sufferer. As MPs prepare to vote, we urge all our readers in England and Wales to appeal to their representatives to stop the Bill. We urge parliamentarians to oppose it. And we pray that God will inform the consciences of those on whom this heavy burden of responsibility is placed.

Those who wish to contact their MPs to express concerns about the new Bill may do so through an online tool provided by Right to Life UK here. It takes less than a minute to do.

Photo: Boadicea and Her Daughters statue and the Elizabeth Tower, commonly known by the name of the clock’s bell, ‘Big Ben’, at the Palace of Westminster, home to the Houses of Parliament, in central London, England, 8 January 2024. (Photo by ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images.)

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