Previous generations were unafraid to face death
We don’t need to look in a dictionary for definitions of words which surround the end of life. ‘Death’ means coming to the end of your life, when your heart stops beating, and your brain ceases to function. ‘Killing’ means the death of a man or woman, brought about by another person, as for example in a war. ‘Murder’ means the deliberate killing of one human being by another. ‘Suicide’ means people ending their lives deliberately. What, then, the situation where a doctor provides and administers lethal drugs to another, who wishes to end his or her own life? Is this ‘assisted dying’?
No, it is not. It is a form of ‘killing’; it is stretching the language even to call it ‘assisted suicide’. The Bill before the House of Lords has hi-jacked the phrase ‘assisted dying’, which has its own very proper meaning.
As a priest I have often over the years been asked to assist people who are dying, usually with family and friends. Prayer, confession, anointing – all have been part of the ‘assisting’ of dying. Reminiscence and memory, the saying of thankyou’s – but above all the presence of other people with the one who is dying, these things belong within the phrase ‘assisted dying’. Certainly, the provision of medical care, to ease pain while maintaining consciousness wherever possible, is vital. The amazing strides over the years by the Hospice Movement should banish all thoughts of pursuing this pernicious Bill. We should be ashamed of what we are doing; we need to pour money and expertise into the support of perhaps the most vulnerable people in our society – the dying – but above all our time, our love and our care.
The proposals of this bill represent an abhorrent indictment upon the UK and on English Law which, for so many centuries has been emulated by so many. Let us hope and pray that those we have elected see sense and have the decency to put it where it belongs.
As I’ve said somewhere else, our politicians seem to be engaged in attacking life at both ends, with almost rubber stamp abortion in spite of what the law says and now this proposal. It’s really naïve to say that they are acting with compassion in allowing ‘assisted dying’. It’s inevitable that people at their most helpless and vulnerable will either feel obliged to end their lives so as not to be a burden on relatives or be pressured into it. I believe there is already evidence from outside the UK where this is the case.
Margaret Thatcher’s revenge on the CofE strikes again:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10963195/Lord-Carey-I-support-assisted-dying.html
I had supposed that, as the momentum for dispatching the terminally ill gained momentum, the C of E would fight a rear-guard action and then capitulate. What I had not foreseen was that there would be a rush to embrace it even before the debate begins! Will Archbishop Welby and the House of Bishops have the courage to rebuke him?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has now lent his support.