I was on LBC radio recently, making the case against Lord Falconer’s lobby for the legalisation of assisted suicide, when the venerable presenter Nick Ross came on the line. He’s an active campaigner for assisted suicide and, I’m afraid, he sneered that it was always people like me who opposed it.
He meant, of course, people who have a religious faith. He’s simply wrong in that accusation; there are people of all faiths and none on both sides of the debate. But his attitude reveals an interesting and depressing assumption among secularist supporters of assisted suicide and euthanasia about the nature of our faith.
That assumption seems to be that we are issued with some vague yet dictatorial commands about “the sanctity of life” from on high, whether from bishops or from our God, which we unthinkingly and heartlessly apply to people suffering debilitating and terminal illnesses.
If he thought about it for a second, Nick would realise how ridiculous that is. He should, perhaps, have a read of Dr Peter Saunders’ blog, Christian Medical Comment, in which he calmly and empirically demolishes Lord Falconer’s latest report, which makes the very shaky case for assisted suicide. No mention of scripture or God or articles of faith, just factual analysis debunking Falconer’s fondness for the idea that helping people to kill themselves should be accepted medical practice.
But of course Dr Saunders’ faith informs his worldview, as any Christian’s life is shaped by his or her Christian faith. And that’s where Nick Ross makes his next error. He and many on his side assume that they are the compassionate liberals, up against swivel-eyed bigots like me.
In fact, the reverse is true. It is we who are enjoined by our Christian faith to defend the weak, the vulnerable, the sick and the elderly, to stand by them and declare that their lives are as valuable and as valued as any of us. It is the enthusiasts for assisted suicide who are affirming that some lives are not worth living, that there is a lower tier of human life, that we should assist some of these people to kill themselves, that in doing so we should squander our world-leading standards of palliative care and that those who do not choose to die by lethal dose have in some way chosen to suffer.
Because that’s where their obsession with personal autonomy, rather than our utter dependence on one another, takes them. There are many grotesque assumptions made in Lord Falconer’s latest report, which simply rehashes his earlier, failed attempts to legalise assisted suicide in the House of Lords. But perhaps the most revealing is the “witness” who had this to say:
“I think we can only go for terminal illness at the moment, so this doesn't actually apply to the people who are about to go into care homes. But, you know, baby steps.”
Early Christians were said to be part of a death cult. I don’t now aim that charge at Nick Ross and his friends, who I’m sure are kind and well-meaning people.
But, on this issue, Christianity begins to look far more like the “life cult”, while Lord Falconer and his bogus “Commission” try to take those little “baby steps” towards a world in which we’re putting to death those who can’t face the prospect of a care home.
George Pitcher is former Secretary for Public Affairs to the Archbishop of
