Is death the ultimate human choice?

Assisted suicide is back on the agenda with Kim Leadbeater’s private members’ bill proposing to make it legal in the UK. There are strong views on the topic, in part because any of us could face it – for ourselves or our relatives. When my own dad was dying of a brain tumour, we had to navigate the realities of end of life care.

We live in a culture that has all too often reduced human life to functionality and usefulness. But what happens when you can no longer contribute to society? Do you still have purpose? We live in a society that is particularly focused on the individual. One campaign group has called itself ‘My death, my decision’ – as if our individual choices don’t affect others. But what about the medical staff who swore an oath to do no harm? What about family and friends who have to live with the loss? What about wider culture – do we really want to be like Canada where 4.1% of all deaths are from assisted suicide? And the number is rising.

Kim Leadbeater, the bill’s sponsor, has argued that adequate safeguards will be put in place, though these have not yet been specified. There have been suggestions that only those with six or 12 months left to live will be eligible, but these types of prognoses are far from certain. Most of us know someone who has beaten the best medical predictions, and the doctors themselves will be under even more pressure to predict how long a patient has left to live.

It is also impossible to safeguard against the pressures an elderly or disabled patient might feel of being a burden. Care is expensive and costs are rising. Imagine knowing that every day you remain alive, you are reducing the amount you can leave to your family or are negatively impacting their financial circumstances. Nothing may be spoken, but the implicit pressure mounts because this proposed legislation would create an alternative way out. That’s to say nothing of the less scrupulous who could exercise coercive control over an elderly or sick relative “in the best interests of everyone”.

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"We live in a culture that has all too often reduced human life to functionality and usefulness. But what happens when you can no longer contribute to society? Do you still have purpose?"

But perhaps, more fundamentally, we struggle as a society to know what to do with suffering. Our desire to end suffering may seem noble, but when we can’t alleviate the suffering, the solution should not be to end the sufferer’s life.

People talk about compassion, but compassion is a distinctly Christian value that means ‘to suffer with’. Compassion is about journeying through suffering, not avoiding it. The Christian faith would be very different if it wasn’t centred on the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Western culture likes to borrow Christian ideas, like dignity and compassion and then empty them of meaning by talking about euthanasia in terms of dignity in dying and a compassionate death.

The whole conversation around assisted dying, whilst being raw and emotionally charged on many levels, can still offer us the opportunity to bring hope and a different perspective to a difficult conversation. The current Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmoud, has spoken with clarity on the subject: “As a Muslim, I have an unshakeable belief in the sanctity and the value of human life. I don’t think death is a service that the state should be offering.”

"Our desire to end suffering may seem noble, but when we can’t alleviate the suffering, the solution should not be to end the sufferer’s life."

Many of all faiths and none share a conviction about the sacred nature of human life. Sometimes we, as Christians, have lacked the clarity of the lord chancellor. We make the slippery slope argument or point to the tragic place Canada now finds itself in with people choosing medically assisted suicide after failing to get adequate housing. But the argument is in many ways simpler and more fundamental – human life is sacred. That belief has motivated Christians like Cicley Saunders to found the modern hospice movement highlighting the importance of good palliative care.

Decisions at the end of life are not easy. There is no quick fix; but making it easier to end a life early is not the hoped for panacea. It simply shifts the pressure, leaving the most vulnerable subject to unspeakable pressure. In our consumerist society, the risk is that death becomes just another choice – the ultimate choice as we play God with our own lives. But what if life itself, not its purpose nor its quality is a gift and not some cosmic fluke? What if every single person is a valuable image bearer – embodied with significance, and invited into connection, presence and participation with the God who created the universe. What if we encounter Him in our suffering, because He too knows what it is to suffer? What if there is more to life than choosing when we die?