False steps in the assisted dying debate
Equally we approach the House of Lords' debate on Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill, (writes Andrew Goddard) it is clear that there is a concerted endeavour to undermine the church'south traditional opposition to laws enabling the killing of the suffering and dying. There have always been some Christians who accept supported this, such equally Hans Kung and Paul Badham and in contempo times Canon Rosie Harper has been a prominent Anglican phonation. They accept now been joined by 2 senior retired Archbishops, George Carey and Desmond Tutu. What is astonishing, looking at their articles, is not only their lack of theological content merely the number of serious flaws and confusions in their arguments. The debate is clearly entering a new phase and information technology would exist a shame if these misleading claims were perpetuated and and then prevented a proper reasoned discussion. What follows offers the briefest of sketches of some of the main false steps in recent Christian arguments.
First, letting become is not the same as assisted killing. Archbishop Tutu makes cracking play of the fact that "What was washed to Madiba (Nelson Mandela) was disgraceful" and George Carey claims that "sophisticated medical science also offers people the adventure to be kept alive far beyond anything that would have been possible merely a few years ago". These are valid arguments to consider the corporeality of intervention to prolong life. They are non arguments for catastrophe life. Assisting people to approach expiry with dignity through the provision of appropriate medical care and support and the non-provision of useless or crushing treatments must be distinguished every bit a separate category from assisting them to bring about their death, for example, by prescribing lethal drugs whose only purpose is to end their life.
2d, easing pain is not the same as assisted killing. George Carey notes that "church building leaders already understand that the use of pain medication such as morphine may occasionally have the result of hastening decease" and so asks "Why not extend this understanding farther, so that the dying take a choice over how and when they wish their lives to end?". Leaving bated the fact that properly administered pain medication is very unlikely to hasten expiry and the seemingly uncritical acceptance of unfettered private autonomy, this only ignores the of import distinction between intended and unintended outcomes of our actions. Hurting relief intends to ease pain, lethal injections intend to kill and prescribing lethal drugs intends to enable killing. To facilitate or enact the concluding two actions does not "extend the understanding" that allows the first. It represents a totally different, perhaps consequentialist, ethic in which either the intention of the amanuensis is irrelevant or the intention to kill or assistance in self-killing is held, in this example, to exist good.
Third, an entreatment to compassion is not an argument and certainly not an argument for assisted killing. Rosie Harper in her speech to peers recently began with the claim, "I'thou speaking from a Christian perspective – and this is about compassion" and stated "There is no condemnation in the bible for someone who is too compassionate". George Carey asserts that the current police force "risks undermining the efforts of families and doctors to intendance for and ease the hurting and misery of people reaching the stop of their lives" (a claim which is not substantiated and only holds if one assumes making assisted suicide a law-breaking somehow undermines intendance and easing pain) and that equally "such pity and concern should be at the very heart of our society" there is a "growing gap betwixt the existing law and the need for compassion". He explains his rethink in terms of asking whether he had been "putting doctrine before compassion" and states information technology would be "more than compassionate" to replace the electric current legal framework with Lord Falconer's pecker and that our attitude to hard cases should be one "non of judgment, but of pity".
At no point is there whatever effort to explicate what is meant past compassion or why the proposed law is more compassionate. Compassion refers to a young man-suffering with someone which leads one to act to relieve their suffering. Information technology is, every bit Carey notes in 1 of his few theological points, a mark of Jesus' ministry: "Jesus's mission was underpinned with pity for those suffering from the most dreadful conditions, such as leprosy. To those people, rejected by society and condemned to live autonomously, he brought comfort, healing and a new sense of dignity". These deportment are those which embody pity – to claim that enabling the sufferer to end their life is the true expression of compassion is highly counter-intuitive (how is that a sharing in their suffering?) and finding an example of such an embodiment of "compassion" from Jesus' pattern of ministry an interesting claiming.
The language of "compassion" is here existence used emotively rather than rationally. This is a highly dangerous move as it portrays defenders of the electric current constabulary and traditional Christian teaching as defective in this fundamental Christian virtue. Indeed, Rosie Harper concludes by stating that the "bottom line" is that to vote against the bill is "neither moral or Christian" while Carey is only slightly more temperate in implying the traditional instruction favours doctrine and dogma over compassion and human being dignity and sanctions "anguish and pain, the very opposite of the Christian message". This points to the real danger that, aided and abetted by such rhetoric and lack of reasoning past Christian leaders, secular society will soon dismiss traditional Christian pedagogy in relation to dying as immoral and cruel. Better to acknowledge that no perspective has a monopoly on compassion and to engage in serious discussion about the nature and limits of compassion and what actions best embody it.
Fourth, hard and difficult cases brand bad law. Harper, Carey and Tutu all follow the standard blueprint of recounting powerful examples of human suffering in the arroyo to death to back up the view that the law must modify. The reality is that every law, past its nature, creates hard and difficult cases where the strict awarding of the constabulary may be open to question. That is not in itself an argument against the constabulary. As Nigel Biggar, for instance, has argued, there is a stiff instance for the current constabulary in this area, and this is then even if i grants there may be farthermost cases where the taking of human life in the approach to death could be morally justifiable. The legal process has various means for handling difficult cases in relation to whether to prosecute and sentencing post-obit confidence. To change the constabulary would represent a much more fundamental shift and the warning of Baroness Butler-Sloss needs to be heard:
Laws, like nation states, are more than secure when their boundaries rest on natural frontiers. The law that we take rests on but such a frontier. It rests on the principle that we practise not involve ourselves in deliberately bringing nigh the deaths of others. Once we first making exceptions based on arbitrary criteria like terminal illness, that borderland becomes just a line in the sand, easily crossed and hard to defend. The police is at that place to protect united states all. We tinker with information technology at our peril.
Fifth, whose lives should the law allow us to assistance in ending? I of the strangest features of the arguments of the two Archbishops is the difficult and difficult cases they cite in back up of irresolute the constabulary. Lord Carey admits that "information technology was the example of Tony Nicklinson [a sufferer of locked-in syndrome] that exerted the deepest influence on me" and also appeals to the situation of Paul Lamb, paralysed in a auto crash. Desmond Tutu appeals to the Southward African Craig Schonegevel who killed himself in tragic circumstances "after 28 years of struggling with neurofibromatosis" as he "decided his quality of life was likewise poor" and the law meant he could non "end his life legally assisted, listening to his favourite music and in the embrace of his beloved parents, Patsy and Neville". It would appear that the proposed Bill would take done nothing for them or anyone else in like circumstances as they were not terminally sick and expected to live for less than six months.
This highlights the lack of logic in the arguments but also the fundamental claiming to whatever change in the law. Unless the law allows an unrestricted "right to die", it needs to define certain groups of people who would be eligible for assistance in ending their lives; in and then doing it excludes other people whose situation of suffering would appear to crave similar handling. Despite Lord Carey's protestations that "it would be outrageous" if the bill'south scope "were extended beyond the terminally ill to an ever-widening group of people, including the disabled and the depressed" his own argument shows that this is non a possible glace-slope arising from man weakness. It is rather the inherent logic of the position he has adopted. Compassion as he defines it and the cases he cites must lead to a widening of the telescopic of those able to be legally assisted to kill themselves and, lest nosotros discriminate against those physically incapable of ending their ain lives even with assistance, volition printing hard on extending this to allowing others to kill them.
Sixth, what virtually the weak and vulnerable? By focussing on hard cases the bigger moving picture is easily lost. Once a category of people are legally classed equally eligible for support to end their lives all those who notice themselves in that class will face up either spoken or unspoken cultural and maybe familial pressure to exercise their legal right. The category currently proposed are in many means the most vulnerable – "given I/you accept only a few months left, why not accept control, do what needs to be done, save lots of money being wasted, and end things sooner rather than subsequently in a way I/you desire?". Much better if society, through the law, tells every living person, however quondam or near death or depressed or incapacitated, that their life is valued and anyone who takes it or assists them in taking it has washed something for which wider lodge, through the law, will concur them to account.
In conclusion, as nosotros consider the current proposed change to the police and doubtless others in the hereafter, it is vital that the emotions that nosotros rightly feel in the face of suffering and dying and the desire to do something to help practise not forbid us engaging in serious, reasoned reflection. The points above highlight that fifty-fifty Christian leaders ofttimes fail to exercise this when they critique the current situation. They too frequently neglect to promote the articulate, indisputably Christian culling. The obligation to show compassion which is at the heart of Lord Carey's statement is one which – with Christians playing a leading role – has found expression in the medical and nursing professions (which risk condign compromised if implicated in the deliberate ending of life, hence their widespread caution or antipathy to irresolute the law) and in particular in the provision of hospices and palliative care for the dying. As the Church building of England calls for a Majestic Commission in this area it needs not only to continue its reasoned defense of the law but also to consider anew how, as we confront the possibility of changes in the police and the need to be distinctively counter-cultural, information technology tin can back up this alternative embodiment of faith, hope and love in the face of suffering and death as the truthful expression of Christ-like compassion.
This article can likewise be found on the Fulcrum website
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