Lawmakers in England and Wales are set to vote Friday on a bill to legalize assisted suicide — a potentially “colossal” change that Catholic leaders and other opponents of the legislation warn would normalize suicide and subject vulnerable people to enormous social pressure to end their lives, despite promised safeguards to curb such coercion.
The proposed legislation — called the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill — would allow terminally ill adults judged to be mentally competent who have six months or less to live to end their lives with the approval of two doctors and a High Court judge.
Introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, the bill seeks to amend the nation’s 1961 Suicide Act that, until now, has outlawed assisted suicide and carried a penalty of up to 14 years in prison. If it passes, as widely expected, it will mark a sweeping shift in UK society, comparable to the 1967 Abortion Act, the abolition of capital punishment, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and the introduction of same sex “marriage.”
A leading critic of the legislation, Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster, has warned it could lead to a “slippery slope” and instill “great fear and trepidation” among the frail and vulnerable, especially those with disabilities. Another concern is that some terminally ill patients could also be coerced by abusive relatives or societal pressures, including critically underfunded palliative care services.
Supporters insist that the bill includes protective measures against coercion, criminalizing any form of pressure to allow assisted suicide with penalties of up to 14 years imprisonment for violations. But opponents argue such “safeguards” are inadequate to prevent abuse or expansion of the law, and question the effectiveness of having two doctors and a judge sign off on assisted suicide requests. The safeguards, they say, detract from the reality that lawful murder is being legislated.
David Albert Jones, director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, noted that the proposed legislation is very similar to the law in Oregon which expanded in scope since it was first introduced, allowing people “eligible for death on the basis of anorexia, arthritis or a hernia.”
This kind of law, he said, “normalizes suicide for a certain category of people, however narrowly defined.” These people believe it is “reasonable” to “want to take their own life, and society will not only tolerate this, but will actively facilitate it,” he added.
Such a change, he stressed, “contradicts the imperative to prevent suicide which is an expression of human solidarity” and added that it “makes an exception to the belief that ‘every suicide is a tragedy.’”
The Catholic Church opposes assisted suicide because it is “gravely contrary to the just love of self” and “contrary to love for the living God.”
Dubious ‘Safeguards’
Dr. Cajetan Skowronski, a medical doctor specializing in geriatric medicine at a hospital in Sussex, agreed with Jones that the law would likely be expanded, just as in Oregon, Canada, Belgium and Holland. The six-month prognosis, he stressed, “is no safeguard.”
“Doctors are lousy at predicting life expectancy,” he said, adding: “The right to die inevitably becomes a duty to die. Our elderly, frail patients frequently feel they are a burden, to their family, to the NHS, and to society overall. In Oregon, [almost] half of those seeking assisted suicide do so because they feel they are a burden to others.”
Skowronski believes that no one can say how the bill’s “safeguards” against coercion and pressure will actually work. He also pointed out that care costs in the last year of life often exceed £100,000.
“If a family member who stands to lose a lot of their perceived inheritance to care bills chooses to launch a subtle campaign of encouraging assisted suicide, always under the veneer of care and compassion, how are we doctors supposed to detect it?” he asked.
The dangers are further compounded, he said, by “broken” health and social care systems. Palliative care is only available to 75% of patients leading to 100,000 deaths without access to this support per year, he noted. “Is this mess of failures, in which patients are the victims, not considered a very real form of ‘pressure’? Or are we so content with our failures that we now think the right solution is to end our problems by ending our patients?”
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, director of the UK’s March for Life, observed that in an increasingly post-Christian society, people do not know how to deal with suffering. Rather than offering true compassion — meaning literally “to suffer with” — she said people are frustrated, unable to control or eliminate the suffering, and so “we look to eliminate the sufferer.”
As a personal caregiver for the elderly for 20 years, Vaughan-Spruce said she has “witnessed their experience of isolation, pain” as well as abusive family members, “uncompassionate ‘care’ agencies, and impersonal doctors.” The suffering, she said, should not have to “resist assisted suicide too — we need to resist it for them.”
Form of Abandonment
Jones said assisted suicide is “presented as a celebration of autonomy or self-determination but in reality, it is a form of abandonment.” He believes it “reinforces the idea that there are some categories of people whom society regards as better off dead,” and noted that if a person were young and healthy, “we would strive to help you to live but you are not so we will not.”
“This is a profoundly un-Christian attitude,” he said.
Vaughan-Spruce recalled that the whole of society, including medical and legal systems, is based on the premise that “all lives are equal, and every life has an intrinsic value.”
“Whether that person in front of us is young, old, rich, poor, whether their situation or illness is self-induced, even if they might be the most heinous criminal, we accept that their life has to be upheld and protected.”
But she added that “now we are saying that the clincher is how you feel about yourself, that life is only valuable if and when you value it.” Such a “relativistic” value system, she stressed, “isn’t only concerning for the old or sick but is a terrible message to give to those who are young and healthy too.
“If the only value we assign to life is the value that an individual gives to themselves,” she said, “this changes everything and undermines society as a whole.”
“Assisted suicide, assisted dying, euthanasia — call it what you will, but don’t try and call it safe,” said Vaughan-Spruce. “We cannot make it ‘safe’ to kill as, by definition, it is as far from safe as it can possibly be, both to the individual and to society — it is deadly!”
