Assisted Suicide Is Becoming Law—Are Church Leaders Ready?

"If I were a British Member of Parliament with a vote on assisted suicide, I would vote against its legalization."

That’s what I wrote when I first addressed this topic in June last year.

Twelve months later and the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has cleared the UK House of Commons by 314 votes in favour to 291 votes against, a slender majority. The Bill is now virtually guaranteed to become the law of the land in England and Wales; there are just a series of rubber-stamping procedures it must now go through before being enacted.

This was not my preferred outcome, but I was proud of my local MP, Sorcha Eastwood, who proved that a liberal political outlook does not require a person to support assisted suicide. Sorcha did her homework on the Bill and used her social media to set out why she couldn’t vote for it in good conscience.

I mentioned an article I wrote in June of last year. That article examined the phrase ‘dying with dignity’, which was deployed many times in the Terminally Ill Adults Bill debate; Hansard (the official parliamentary record) features the term ‘dignity’ 25 times, and the term ‘dignified’ 5 times. Nevertheless, there were conflicting takes on what dignity is and how we can best safeguard it.

Overwhelmingly, the MPs who made reference to ‘dignity’ and a ‘dignified’ end-of-life in support of the Bill were also those who mentioned such words as ‘agency’, ‘choice’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘control’.

There was a weakness in this libertarian framing, however, that Sorcha picked up on: ‘Enshrining in law a state-funded right to die, while [we do] not enshrine a similar right to the palliative care that might make life worth living, is deeply wrong’, she wrote in a Facebook post, ‘It means people will end their lives under the guise of “choice”, while denied the care that could have given the hope, comfort & meaning they needed to want to live’.

Admittedly, there were other MPs who framed their language of ‘dignity’ and a ‘dignified’ end-of-life in terms of pain relief; but this would seem to make a stronger case for palliative care to be resourced appropriately, rather than being a point in favour of assisted suicide.

I noted in the 2024 article that our experiences are a defining factor in our approach to the debate on assisted suicide. Parliamentarians offered personal stories as part of their deliberations, too. For example, Mark Garnier, the Conservative Member for Wyre Forest (and in favour of the Bill), recounted his mother’s battle with cancer in a moving speech.

I have a great deal of respect, having lost my late Uncle Alan to leukaemia, for the views of anyone who has come to support assisted suicide after having walked with a suffering relative. In the 2024 article, however, I rejected the notion that a person’s terminal illness will inevitably strip their dignity from them: ‘it was Uncle Alan’s defiance in the face of his infirmity – the will to fight on, until he could fight no more – that made his death a dignified one.’

People with similar experiences, it seems, can draw very different conclusions from them. There is probably zero chance that I could change Mr Garnier’s mind, or that Mr Garnier could change my mind. Our views are our views; and, because they are shaped by personal experience, they are deeply and sincerely held.

Yes, the Bill may now be within touching distance of becoming law; but the conversation around its implementation and its ethical implications must not end. People in England and Wales will soon have to wrestle, when facing a terminal diagnosis, with whether they choose to take up the option of assisted suicide or not. If the goal really was ‘agency, ‘choice’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘control’, as the Bill’s advocates argued it was, then patients must have all the relevant advice and information to hand – including that which pertains to palliative care.

Some believers have, in recent days, used their online voice to let it be known that Britain is under Satan’s thumb now. This type of scaremongering is, and always has been, extremely counterproductive; not least because it demonises those whose views are, as I have already said, the product of deep and sincere consideration. The 314 MPs who voted for the Terminally Ill Adults Bill are, I have no doubt, humane and conscientious men and women, as are the 291 who voted against it.

Whatever the manner of a person’s death, and whether they make use (or not) of assisted suicide, nothing can thwart God’s plan that all would have life in the world to come. There cannot be the slightest hint of a return, even in the unspoken attitudes of our hearts, to the ignorance which saw suicide victims buried in unconsecrated ground outside so many churchyards.

I would be horrified if denying the Sacrament of the Sick (often called ‘last rites’) to the recipients of assisted suicide were to become the end-of-life equivalent of refusing baptism to the children of unwed or single parents, which still happens all too frequently.

Regardless of how any of us die, we bear God’s image in life, and we will bear his image forever. God is making all things new (Revelation 21.5); he would never set up an eternal hierarchy between people based on how their death came about. I hope, therefore, that all those who seek assisted suicide will be treated equitably by the Church.

Religious organisations – the Church of England, above all – will have new pastoral situations to confront. I pray that God might give ‘discerning minds’ (1 Kings 3.12) to the clergy, particularly when family members have different views about what makes ‘a good death’ (or ‘a perfect end’, in the old prayerbook language). They really will need the wisdom of Solomon when this Bill becomes law…