Church of England Reaffirms Disapproval of Euthanasia
The highest senior member of the 77-million member Anglican Communion re-iterated his disapproval of euthanasia, in light of the final evidence session of the House of Lords select committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill
The highest senior member of the 77-million member Anglican Communion re-iterated his disapproval of euthanasia, in light of the final evidence session of the House of Lords select committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005.
In a January 20 op-ed to the Times in London, the Archbishop of Canterbury explained that if euthanasia – also known as assisted suicide - is recognized legally, it would place a responsibility on others to kill.
“Rights create responsibilities, we often like to say. Does the recognition of a legal right to assisted dying entail a responsibility on others to kill? This is not an academic question,” said Canterbury. “What legal implications could arise about the deliberate frustration of someone’s legally secured rights, if relatives or physicians refused to act?”
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Canterbury also appealed to the belief in the intrinsic value of human life as a reason to halt the euthanasia bill from becoming law.
“The appeal to our sense of compassion in order to justify a change in our legal practice is wholly understandable,” wrote Canterbury, stating the oft-used argument in favor of assisted suicide. “But could it end up undermining just that broad sense of unconditional human worth and value in which compassion itself is grounded?”
Canterbury also said that for someone with religious beliefs to say they wanted to die was for them to feel their life had no value.
"That would be, in the eyes of most traditional believers, Christian or otherwise, an admission that faith had failed," he said.
Additionally, allowing non-believers to support assisted suicide would be harmful to the society as a whole, said Williams.
Allowing non-believers to take a different view through assisted suicide would be harmful for society as a whole, Williams added.
“What anyone’s life means is not exclusively his own affair. He lives in relation — to others and to a society,” explained Williams. “At the simplest level, what often most shocks and grieves people who have been close to a suicide is the feeling that someone who has killed himself did not know what he really meant to his friends or family, did not know that he was loved and value”
Williams’ statement comes only one week after a British judge freed a retired policeman who killed his terminally-ill wife out of “compassion.”
The man, Brian Blackburn, 62, plead guilty to the manslaughter of his wife, Margaret. Brian, who made a suicide pact with his wife, slit Margaret’s wrist and then held her for the 20 minutes until she died, according to reports. He then tried to cut his own wrist, but he failed to sever an artery and soon ended up in the hospital.
Earlier this week, Blackburn was released without a prison sentence, after being described a “loving husband.”
In a separate case, Graham Lawson, a man who “comforted” his terminally ill sister during her 26-hour suicide, was not charged with a crime. Lawson faced the possibility of 14 years’ imprisonment because he watched as his sister repeatedly tried to suffocate herself with a plastic bag; she was successful on her eight time.
According to the BBC, the House of Lords select committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill holds it’s final evidence session on Thursday. The Select Committee was set up to consider a Private Member’s Bill calling for legalized euthanasia introduced by Lord Joffe.
The Church of England House of Bishops and the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales last year sent in a joint submission to the House of Lords Select Committee, where they described the Bill as “misguided” and “unnecessary.”
In its conclusion, the bishops’ joint submission says: “It is deeply misguided to propose a law by which it would be legal for terminally ill people to be killed or assisted in suicide by those caring for them, even if there are safeguards to ensure it is only the terminally ill who would qualify.
“To take this step would fundamentally undermine the basis of law and medicine and undermine the duty of the state to care for vulnerable people. It would risk a gradual erosion of values in which over time the cold calculation of costs of caring properly for the ill and the old would loom large. As a result many who are ill or dying would feel a burden to others. The right to die would become the duty to die.”
It adds: “The Bill is unnecessary. When death is imminent or inevitable there is at present no legal or moral obligation to give medical treatment that is futile or burdensome. It is both moral and legal now for necessary pain relief to be given even if it is likely that death will be hastened as a result. But that is not murder or assisted suicide.
“What terminally ill people need is to be cared for, not to be killed. They need excellent palliative care including proper and effective regimes for pain relief. They need to be treated with the compassion and respect that this Bill would put gravely at risk.”
