Theos Report on Assisted Dying

The latest report from Theos has just been published:

Andrew Grey, The Meaning of Dignity: What’s Beneath the Assisted Dying Debate? (London: Theos, 2024).

As it happens, this is a revision of a report first published in 2018, now revised and reissued in the light of the publication of the Assisted Dying Bill earlier this month.

Here is the blurb:

‘The question of assisted dying is never far away and is now back somewhere near the top of the political agenda. It’s a serious and sensitive debate, about which well-meaning people can disagree profoundly.

‘Much of that disagreement can be traced to conflicting ideas about the meaning of human “dignity”. “Dignity” is used in two subtly different ways – one to do with autonomy and choice, the other with care and relationships – and how we understand the term shapes how we think people should be treated at the end of life.

‘This essay, by Andrew Grey, a fully revised and extended version of Theos’ 2018 report on Dignity in Dying, explores both meanings of “dignity” and argues that the idea of “dignity-through-care” gives a better account of what it means to be human.

‘More pressingly, it also argues that if dignity is understood as personal autonomy expressed through choice, society no longer has any deep reason to deny an individual their choice to die, even if they are not in a terminal condition, not in unbearable pain, or indeed not even in physical ill-health.’

A pdf of the full report is available here.

Theos Report on Assisted Dying

The latest report from Theos has just been published:

Andrew Grey, Dignity at the End of Life: What’s Beneath the Assisted Dying Debate? (London: Theos, 2018).

Here is the summary blurb:

‘In spite of Parliament’s emphatic rejection of a “right to die” bill in 2015, the issue of assisted dying remains a live one. Central to both sides of the debate is the idea of “dignity”. This essay examines the different meanings of the word and then outlines what an understanding of dignity as being loved and valued would look like for the terminally ill.’

As Baroness Ilora Finlay of Llandaff writes in the foreword:

‘This report… examines concepts of dignity in living, particularly in the face of deteriorating health, and develops a more informed view of what dignity really is, how it is respected and enhanced, and what it can and should look like for everyone.’

A pdf of the full report is available here.

Centre for Public Christianity (February 2016)

Among other items of interest, the Centre for Public Christianity has posted video interviews with Margaret Somerville about ‘what’s happening with euthanasia around the world, why the language we use about it is so important, and why she feels that there’s more to us as humans than we can fully understand. In addition is an audio discussion between Justine Toh and Natasha Moore on ‘two myths of the modern age: a reliance upon pop evolutionary psychology that seeks to account for human behaviour via an appeal to our evolutionary past, and the “sex myth” that links our individual worth and value to our bedroom antics’.

Centre for Public Christianity (August 2015)

Among other items, the Centre for Public Christianity has posted a video interview with Trevor Hart on ‘the role of art and the imagination in coming to terms with the human condition’, and an audio interview with Margaret Somerville who explains ‘why she believes euthanasia is a social and ethical disaster – and why we should trust our imaginations more’.

Peter Saunders on George Carey on Assisted Suicide

I was interested to read this morning a piece in The Guardian reporting that George Carey, ‘former archbishop lends his support to campaign to legalise right to die’.

Having posted on previous occasions about assisted suicide (here, here, and here), I thought I’d link to this too.

Carey’s statement is available to read in The Daily Mail here.

The Times has a piece from Justin Welby (here, though you have to be a subscriber to see it online, or read page 22 of today’s newspaper), summed up in the headline: ‘Helping people to die is not truly compassionate.’

Helpfully quick off the mark is Peter Saunders on ‘Why Lord Carey is so desperately wrong about legalising assisted suicide’.

Towards the end of the piece, he writes that ‘there is no discernible Christian world view underpinning what [Carey] says’:

‘Nothing of the fact that God made us and owns us; nothing of biblical morality or the sixth commandment; no doctrine of the Fall; little insight into the depths of human depravity and the need for strong laws to deter exploitation and abuse of vulnerable people; nothing of the cross or the resurrection; no hope beyond death; nothing of courage and perseverance in the face of suffering; no recognition of the need to make one’s peace with God and others before death; no real drive to make things better for dying patients and no real empathy with the feelings of vulnerable disabled and elderly people who fear a law like Falconer’s and will be campaigning in force outside parliament next Friday.

‘Carey has instead produced a piece that is high on emotion but weak on argument that capitulates to the spirit of the age; that enthrones personal autonomy above public safety; that sees no meaning or purpose in suffering; that appears profoundly naïve about the abuse of elderly and disabled people; that looks forward to no future beyond the grave and that could have been written by  a member of the national secular society, British humanist association or voluntary euthanasia society.’

Update (13 July 2014): Justin Welby’s article from The Times is now available here.

George Pitcher on Assisted Suicide

Yesterday (18 October 2011) LICC and Theos co-hosted an evening event with George Pitcher on assisted suicide under the title ‘Don’t Put Yourself Down’.

George Pitcher is the author of A Time To Live: The Case against Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (excerpt here). He is a journalist by background and has worked as an award-winning Industrial Editor of The Observer and as Religion Editor of The Daily Telegraph, before spending a year as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Secretary for Public Affairs.

In the LICC blurb for the event, he was billed as being ‘one of the most outspoken critics of attempts by lobbyists to have assisted suicide legalised in the UK’, who ‘believes that no proper case can be made in law, medical practice or theology for the establishment of a two-tier system of human life in which some lives are considered of less value than others’.

George also contributed a ‘Connecting with Culture’ piece on the topic for LICC some weeks back, which can be viewed here, and which gives a flavour of his perspective and style.

Beyond the obvious ‘life and death’ issue itself, a topic like assisted suicide provides a way of exploring how various underlying cultural currents shape our moral convictions – currents like autonomy, rights, and consumerism. Thus, engaging with it requires formulating a Christian understanding not just of assisted suicide but broader issues related to lifestyle and choice, suffering, sickness and death.

Of the many stimulating things that George said during the evening, his comments about ‘dependence’ stuck out for me. Human life, he reminded us, has been turned into a commodity – where we worship at the altar of ‘choice’, and where a ‘lifestyle’ can be bought. So, if we can buy the life we live, why not also the death we die? But this way of thinking and living, said George, takes no account of ‘dependency’ – our dependence on God, on others, and even on the created order – where dependency is a healthy and honourable estate, where we rightly take care of babies, of those who are sick, of the old, infirm, and dying.

We’ve grown afraid of such dependency, George argued, privileging the heroic loners and those trampling over others to get to the top of the pile in The Apprentice, assuming that ‘autonomy’ is a right of life. But this, according to George, is absurd –from a theological and philosophical perspective, as well as in legal terms. Thus, we should seek to recover our capacity for, and human requirement of, mutual dependence – in the issue of assisted suicide as anywhere else.

John Wyatt on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

John Wyatt, Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, Cambridge Papers 19, 2 (June 2010).

The Jubilee Centre has made available the latest Cambridge Paper on euthanasia and assisted suicide by Professor John Wyatt.

Here is the summary:

‘The arguments in favour of the legalisation of assisted suicide and euthanasia are no longer focussed on unbearable suffering. Instead there is a rising demand for choice and control over the time and manner of our death, coupled with fears about the social and economic consequences of increasing numbers of elderly and dependent individuals. But there are strong medical, legal, social and theological reasons to oppose this new drive for suicide and euthanasia. The potent modern myth of the autonomous individual fails to match with the inescapable reality of human dependence and relationality. The increasing public support for the legalisation of medical killing provides an urgent challenge to the medical and legal professions and to the Christian community as a whole. Are Christians capable of living out a practical and countercultural demonstration of the preciousness of human life expressed in human interdependence, personal commitment and burden-sharing?’

John Wyatt – a long-standing member of the board of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity – is profiled in EG 26 (June 2010), a publication of LICC, available here.

Christian Concern for Our Nation

The legal team at Christian Concern for Our Nation have produced some short booklets (between 12 and 20 pages each) available for free download (with contribution encouraged) on their resources page. They seek to explain the importance of the sanctity of life and free speech as well provide information on how the law currently stands on these issues.

The following booklets are available:

Abortion

Protecting the Embryo: Why It’s Essential

Freedom to Evangelise and Freedom of Speech

How Suicide Killing of Human Life Became a Human Right in the United Kingdom