- Archbishop of Canterbury warns assisted dying is “dangerous”
- Proposed bill focuses on terminally ill patients only
- Public polls show 60-75% support for assisted dying legislation
The Archbishop of Canterbury has described assisted dying as “dangerous” and warned that it may lead to a “slippery slope” in which more individuals feel driven to end their lives medically.
The leader of the Church of England was addressing ahead of the first reading of a measure in Parliament that would allow terminally ill people in England and Wales to terminate their lives.
Kim Leadbeater, the MP who filed the bill on Wednesday, said she disagrees with the archbishop’s “slippery slope” argument, pointing out that their proposal is for those who are terminally ill and suffering at the end of their lives.
Recent polls have regularly shown that 60-75% of the British public support such legislation.
Forms of assisted dying are allowed in various places throughout the world, and supporters believe the UK may benefit from studying where such systems have worked best.
However, Archbishop Justin Welby stated that legalizing assisted dying “opens the door to it broadening, such that people who are not in that situation [terminally ill] asking for this, or feeling compelled to ask for it.”
He and 25 other Church of England bishops and archbishops sit in the House of Lords and can vote on legislation.
“For 30 years as a priest, I’ve sat by people’s bedsides. And some have said, ‘I want my mother, my kid, and my brother to leave because this is so horrific,'” he explained.
He admitted that as a teenager, he had had similar feelings about his father in his later years. He also mentioned his mother, Jane, 93, who died last year, saying she remembered feeling like a “burden.”
However, he stated that he did not want people to feel guilty for having such thoughts and that he was concerned that people would feel obligated to ask to die if they thought burdened, which he deemed incorrect.
He stated that the belief that “everyone, however useful they are, is of equal worth to society” had declined significantly during his lifetime. He claimed that the disabled, ill, and elderly were frequently disregarded, which affected their ability to seek assisted death.
However, Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who sponsored the assisted dying bill in Parliament, stated that the measure would only apply to terminally ill persons, not those with impairments or mental health disorders, and that there would be precise requirements for access, as well as medical and legal protections.
The law must alter—I’m absolutely clear on that—but we need to get the details correct, she told Victoria Derbyshire.
The present quo is not fit for purpose, and I have spent time with many families who have been through comparable, horrible, end-of-life situations, which is one of the reasons I decided to propose this legislation.
Public members have also supported the government’s efforts to enact such legislation.
One woman revealed that her 54-year-old husband had Huntington’s, an incurable degenerative disease. She had attempted suicide three times because he wanted to die before the condition “robbed him of his dignity.”
Jane Vervoorts stated that her husband, Dick, died with several police officers and paramedics gathered around his bed. She was then probed, and she claims she was “made to feel like a murderer” before the police determined it was not a criminal matter.
She stated that they had discussed Dignitas, a Swiss clinic that provides assisted dying to the terminally ill, but she could not afford to travel, and “I would have been in trouble for taking him.
Sarah Wootton, CEO of the campaign group Dignity in Dying, described the bill as a “historic opportunity” and said the ban on assisted dying was forcing terminally ill people to suffer despite receiving the best care, spend their life savings traveling to Switzerland, or take matters into their own hands at home, leaving relatives traumatized.
Dr. Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, branded the newest attempt to legalize assisted suicide or euthanasia as “dangerous” and “ideological.”
He stated: “No doubt, some would argue that legalizing assisted suicide or euthanasia is progressive, but it is not…Instead, I urgently urge legislators and the government to focus on repairing our failing palliative care system.”
Assisted dying has been one of the critical topics of debate about the presence of religious figures in parliament.
Secular groups in the United Kingdom have long demanded that religion be removed from the debate and that senior bishops be stripped of their power to vote on the issue in the House of Lords.
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When the matter was last voted on at the General Synod in 2022, only 7% of the Church of England’s national legislature supported a legal change.
This contrasts with public polls, which show strong majorities favoring the measure.
There will be people who look at that and say the Church is totally out of touch, that they totally disagree with us, and say they are going nowhere near a church, but we don’t do things on the basis of opinion polls,” Archbishop Canterbury said.
Last Monday, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, urged Catholics to write to their MPs to express their opposition to assisted dying.
However, the Church of England is the “established Church” in England and 26 Church of England bishops and archbishops are automatically appointed to the House of Lords.
The bill’s second reading will occur in Parliament on Friday, November 29.
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