Much of the debate against assisted dying has focused on the sanctity of life, and the need to protect vulnerable people from being pressured into giving up their lives due to the burden of being caref for, and the effect this may have on those around them.
I sympathise deeply with this perspective – it is the main logical objection I had to assisted dying for a long time: a desire to protect the vulnerable – alongside my own faith which felt like it provided a moral objection to assisted dying on principle.
Yet over recent years, seeing some elderly relatives grow ever older and more infirm, I have considered the fate of one of my grandmothers, who died quite suddenly of a heart attack in her mid-70s. As part of working through the grief, it was a comfort to know that she died quickly, in the arms of a close friend (by sheer luck), at a time when she was still able to go for long walks in the mountains. She could doubtless have gone on for a few more years, but would have struggled to remain independent for much longer.
Compare this to my other grandmother, now in her late 80s. She has been almost immobile for years – and now finally has reached a stage where my ageing grandfather is no longer able to take care of her. She is confined to a care home, and I know she prays for God to take her. She wants to die, but is instead left languishing as her body slowly gives up on her. I do not think she would want the option of assisted dying. I also know that as a family we would never countenance the idea that she should feel pressured in any way to take it up.
Yet as I look at her experience, and humanity’s increasingly effective efforts to prolong life long beyond what nature originally intended, I find myself returning to this passage in John 15 v 9-14:
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command.”
Too often I think we are concerned about our own lives – our own ambitions – our own rights. As a Christian, I am reminded that the life I should choose to emulate is that of a servant: one who prizes the needs of others over my own. I fail at this daily, as we all do, but I am struck that the one example of what love truly means, as outlined in John’s gospel, is this: being willing to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
This example of the ultimate sacrifice is often taken either figuratively (a willingness to put others’ needs before our own), or else when remembering fallen soldiers. Yet I see no biblical reason why willingly laying down one’s life for the good of society couldn’t also be a valid interpretation.
I clearly do not believe that anyone should feel pressured to end their lives. Ever. And yet for myself, I have no intention of reaching the stage where I am so dependent on others that I am, in effect, just waiting to die. I want the option to take a decision to end my life before I get to that stage: before I become such a burden on society that all of the good I have done starts to be eroded by the cost of keeping me alive.
Not everyone will feel the same way. Many will rightly feel they have more to give, more wisdom to impart, more love to spread in the world. Yet John 15 forces me to ask this question: why should my act of service to others be limited to what I can achieve in life? Why should I not be able to choose death as an act of service, and love?
As Parliament debates assisted dying, I hope that alongside prioritising the rights of the most vulnerable in society, as we are right to do, we also consider the rights of those of us who are more fortunate, and yet whose love for our country and our society might be characterised by the willingness to sacrifice our lives for it.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…
* Chris Adams has been a PPC (Greenwich in 2017, Keighley in 2024), as well as a former Vice-Chair of Federal Conference Committee.
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10 Comments
Thank you for this contribution. It does reflect my own feelings. But it is not just about the “cost of keeping me alive”, it is also about the impact of keeping me alive on my family and friends in preventing them from more beneficial activities.
This makes me deeply uncomfortable.
I am absolutely in favour of people who have no quality of life left being allowed to choose to no longer live a life that has nothing in it left for them.
But the idea that a person would stop living because the costs are higher than they would like is exactly the position that I want to avoid. It puts us in a world where the government can say “Well, we’d love to keep you alive, but are you aware that it’s costing your kids cash to pay for this medicine, are you sure you wouldn’t like to just die and save them the money?”
An issue with the Leadbeater bill is that it is confined to terminal illness with a prognosis of death within six months. It does not seek to include “intolerable suffering” which is not medically terminal. I don’t criticise Kim Leadbeater for this; she seeks to achieve the widest level of support. But it does mean, that as former judge Nicholas Mostyn, who has Parkinson’s, grumpily observed, the bill “is no fucking use” to people in his position.
It also means that a lot of the opposition to the Leadbeater Bill is intellectually dishonest whataboutery. There may well have been problems with the widely drafted legislation in Canada or the Netherlands. But to use problems with that legislation as a stick with which to beat a proposal based on the much more narrowly drawn legislation in Oregon is wholly improper, however sincere the people doing it.
Thanks Steve Nash – I agree cost in the context should be read as including non-financial cost: most definitely.
And Andrew Ducker – it should never be the Government’s choice, I agree. It’s a very personal decision. I’d rather be able to make that choice for myself when I’m still able to, rather than slide into a state where I’m no longer able to. As always with these debates, it comes down to the individual. All I’m arguing for is the ability for individuals to have the choice – and that this should be considered alongside the need to protect the vulnerable. Rather than being stigmatised, it could be a very noble thing to do.
I find this a very odd article. ASI the author really saying that the motivation for passing an assisted death act is that people can feel good about voluntarily ending their lives because otherwise they are a burden on their relatives/society as a whole?
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” Possibly. It’s also not far away from Dulce et decorum est pro partria mori.
Thanks for sharing this but is your argument not very close to the idea that if an elderly person needs to move to a Care Home and their house sold to pay for it, the elderly person would be acting selfishly by choosing to carry on living rather than prioritising leaving an inheritance for their family.
This has moved a long way from the idea that assisted dying was all about helping people avoid a painful death. Precisely why I oppose the idea.
Mary: if I were in the position you describe I’d very probably say that I’d rather my grandchildren received “what I had gathered from coincidence” rather than it glugging into the coffers of some hedge fund “investor” while I was kept “alive” and miserable. (I say that with some feeling remembering my beloved and fiercely independent godmother who spent the last four years of her life as a thoroughly miserable income stream).
But this is precisely not an issue the Leadbeater bill raises.
Like others I find this argument about assisted dying odd and is it right ? The biblical passage about giving one’s life for one’s friends means doing something good even though it risks death. The aim is the good achieved not the death itself.
From a Christian perspective I have always been troubled by those who say Christ was sent to die; rather Christ came to show true eternal love in life amongst humans, knowing that human reaction would inevitably lead to his death. That is not the same as coming in order to die.
I have great sympathy with those who see loved ones in the torment of illness, and indeed those who dearly wish that a life of suffering would end. However, as a ‘plain and simple’ Christian, I find these feelings constantly overruled by the statement that, even if the state were to ‘allow’ it, we simply do not have the right to end life. Life is a gift of God and He alone is the one who can end it.
My question for those in favour of legalising assisted dying if, assuming you accept that there is a risk of people being pressurised or coerced into applying for assisted death, what is an acceptable number. Suppose a study or series of studies concluded that on average 10 people a year were pressured into applying for assisted death would the harm to them outweigh the benefit to people who genuinely wish to end their lives?