Blog, ‘We need to talk about race and assisted dying’, by Chine McDonald was referenced in Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill debate in the House of Lords. 19/09/2025

Baroness Berridge (Con) quoted an extract from blog ‘We need to talk about race and assisted dying’ by Chine McDonald saying:

My Lords, sadness and sympathy are palpable in our inboxes and in this Chamber. Your Lordships’ House is a sobering scene. I begin with what is missing from the Bill—the letter “S”, the plural. As the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, has outlined, there is no mention of family or relatives. Its premise is the western Enlightenment view of the self and individual autonomy, which is alien to parts of the UK, let alone to some of our ethnic minority communities. On the latter, I can put it no better than an article by Chine McDonald, director of Theos, in a post on 26 November last year:

“Many people will be familiar with the southern African term ‘Ubuntu’, which means ‘I am because you are’. In my own community—the Igbo ethnic group of south–eastern Nigeria—there is the concept of the Umunna: the fraternity, the clan or the community … there is a strong sense of existing not as an individual, but knitted into a family … The idea that someone who is facing death might not want to be a burden … is anathema to West African tradition. You can’t be a burden because you are not a separate entity. You’re part of a whole”.

Find the transcript from the rest of the debate here.