assisted suicide

Sarah Mullally is outshining Justin Welby on assisted dying

by
Sarah Mullally, Archbishop of Canterbury, in purple episcopal shirt, clerical collar and pectoral cross, before a stained glass window.

Thanks to UnHerd for carrying my piece on the Archbishop of Canterbury and the assisted dying debate…

Earlier this week, Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally wrote an opinion piece in the Telegraph urging MPs to vote against the reintroduced Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill when it comes before the Commons on Friday. The article restates her opposition to assisted dying, expressed in a speech in the House of Lords last year and again when the previous bill ran out of time in the upper house in April.

Mullally’s predecessor, Justin Welby, also objected to assisted dying legalisation during the passage of the previous bill, but by the time the key Second Reading vote took place in November 2024, he had announced his resignation over safeguarding failures. The argument the bishops most wanted to make — that the state cannot be trusted to protect the vulnerable from coercion — was being made by an institution that had just demonstrated it could not protect the vulnerable in its own care.

That is the deficit Mullally is placed to repair. The Archbishop objects to assisted dying because the pressure to opt for the measure against one’s own wishes will fall most heavily on those who are most vulnerable: the poor, disabled people, and ethnic minorities. Although these arguments dovetail with Church of England perspectives on assisted dying, they are clinical rather than religious objections that echo those made by, among others, secular disability campaigners.

Read more

My Views on the Assisted Suicide Bill

by

I wish I had the certainty of so many giving their opinion in favour of or opposed to the assisted suicide bill before parliament tomorrow. I have very mixed feelings about it all. I have no objection on principle to assisted suicide in some circumstances – circumstances that are often too horrible to bear – but this proposal is rushed, and both too little and too much. I would vote against.

This proposal is too little, in that it doesn’t cover the two circumstances where the cases for assisted suicide is strongest. One is the situation faced by Tony Nicklinson, a compos mentis adult with a minimal quality of life expressing a persistent wish to die over many years, but physically unable to do so themselves. The second is that faced by many elderly people who, having lost all faculties, often accompanied by a degrading degree of incontinence or severe and constant pain, are locked away on the upper floors of nursing homes, forgotten by everyone, including by themselves.

I doubt there is anyone alive who isn’t opposed to tomorrow’s bill on principle who won’t also support access to assisted suicide in these circumstances. I do. So, if this bill does pass, it will mark the start of a process of steadily widening access to medically-assisted death. That won’t be a bad thing in every case, but I wonder how we’re going to stop before court cases and pro-euthanasia enthusiasts lead into very dangerous territory. We know that some disabled Canadians have been put under pressure to opt for assisted suicide, that Belgium will offer euthanasia to otherwise healthy young adults with chronic depression, that the Netherlands has euthanised dementia patients who seemed to be resisting. This is not a subject on which one should be blind to long-term consequences and the tendency of courts to make legislation more permissive than originally intended over time.

And that’s why it seems so wrong that we are rushing into legislation that has emerged essentially out of nowhere, without the benefit of the dedicated team of civil servants and parliamentary draftsmen and longer consultation that a government-sponsored bill would have. Labour haven’t even been in power for five months yet; there just hasn’t been time to do the job of drafting the bill properly.

Read more