The case for resisting termination: ten arguments

1. Scripture says that life is God's and he is in charge of its issues

We are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26), and it is the Lord God who gives us life (Job 33:4) and who has numbered our days (Job 14:5). Job was urged by his wife to “curse God and die”; he wouldn’t; the verdict is “in all this Job did not sin with his lips” (Job 2:9-10).

For Christians, death is “the last enemy” (1 Corinthians 15:26) – not a welcome answer to our problems. God is sovereign over when and how we die; Job says, “I know you will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living.” (Job 30:23) The Old Testament examples of people taking their own lives are extremely limited, and offer no model. There are Samson, Saul, and Ahitophel, and each case is so different from the others it teaches us nothing about the ethics of euthanasia.

2. All human life counts - we don't decide which lives are worthy and which aren't

If human beings are made in God’s image, every single one is worthy of our respect, whether healthy or disabled, aged or young, mentally aware or in a persistent vegetative state. We cannot decide which lives are worth living. To allow people to die too easily might deprive them of some of the greatest experiences they could ever have. If Jane Hawking had not fought to prevent doctors from turning off her husband’s life support machine, we would never have had A Brief History of Time.

Says Tanni Grey-Thompson (Britain’s most successful Paralympian, now a peer:

I was born with spina bifida, and have been a wheelchair user for 46 years. One thing that has always surprised me is how many people throughout that period have said to me, “It’s so sad you’re in a wheelchair,” and even at times, “You must have thought of killing yourself.” These comments are as infuriating as they are ridiculous. I’ve had ups and downs, like most people, in my personal and professional life. But I value those – and it is disappointing that others sometimes don’t.

3. Palliative care makes a massive difference

The hospice movement has shown how much of a difference it can make for people to receive proper care as their death approaches. And much more could be done. Dr. Mayur Lakhani, chair of the National Council for Palliative Care, says that 75% of deaths can be anticipated a year in advance, and if care is sought then, it can be truly excellent.

4. There are wider consequences for society

If we devalue human life in this way, could we be sure that there wouldn’t be pressure placed on vulnerable people to die? Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph commented:

In a state-run service like ours in which one person’s need is always weighed up against another’s in order to apportion spending, it would not be long before those refusing to drink the lethal cocktail could be represented as money-wasting bed-blockers.

There is some disturbing evidence that when assisted suicide is publicized, other people start to ask for it more than usually. Before Brittany Maynard died in 2014, the number of lethal prescriptions written in Oregon was 39% higher than the state’s monthly average.

5. The doctor is a healer, not an executioner

Doctors are agents of healing. To give them a killing role, as well, reduces public confidence in them – especially amongst the vulnerable. Older people in The Netherlands are often frightened by men in white coats, whom they now associate with the threat of death.

Doctors’ ethics are generally based on the Hippocratic Oath, which includes the words And I will not give a drug that is deadly to anyone if asked, nor will I suggest the way to such a counsel. While it’s true that not all medical schools in the UK require their students to swear the Oath these days, there has been an increase (from 50% of medical schools in 1997 to 70% in 2017), while a sample of 67 US medical schools showed that all of them used the Oath.

Doctors are not always skilled in working out what patients really want. When Colin Campbell went to Dignitas in 2017, he was given six tests to ensure he was not vulnerable or being coerced. Yet after finding out what help was available to him to support his lifestyle in Scotland, he decided not to die. The assurance of support can change a sufferer’s mind completely. Not Dead Yet UK say this:

We believe individual disabled people’s suicidal cries for help come from a lack of proper practical, emotional and medical support needed to live dignified lives, rather than from the ‘suffering’ they experience as a result of a medical condition. Such loss of hope – which forces some to see death as their only option – is easily misinterpreted in a society that continues to see and treat disabled people as second class citizens. Individuals risk being easily exploited by the ‘right-to-die’ movement or, worse, by family, friends and health care professionals. Their attitude is not compassionate – it is prejudiced and disablist. We oppose policies that single out individuals for legalised killing based on their medical condition or prognosis.

Philosopher Julian Baggini talked to vets about their experiences of “putting down” animals. He was told that one of the biggest dilemmas for pet owners is knowing just when to kill their pet; they tend to put it off, waiting for something to happen which will make the decision more justified. Baggini comments:

That worry about going "too soon" is even more acute for humans. Dogs and cats live in the moment and there is a sense in which death does not rob them of a future they can anticipate nor a past that they recollect which has shaped their identity. In that sense, whether they go today or tomorrow should matter less than for many humans, for whom tomorrow is present as a very real possibility. But the price we pay is having to be alive when we no longer have anything left to live for.

6. What we want isn't always what's best for us

Just because someone really wants to die, that doesn’t mean that it’s kindness to grant their wishes. Human desire is not the absolute. And carers’ wishes aren’t absolute either. Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, says:

The exhaustion of caring, sometimes combined with relationships that have been difficult for years before someone fell ill, can lead people to want and feel things that they should not. All of us who have been involved in pastoral care and bereavement care have heard the confusion people feel about how they behaved to a demanding relative. The tests in the bill do not make space, and never could, for the infinite complexity of motives and desires that human beings feel. The law at present does make that space, and yet calls us to be the best we can.

7. You begin a slippery slope

Once euthanasia or assisted suicide becomes possible, it will be very easy for elderly people to start feeling that they are a burden and therefore ought to accept termination because it will make life easier for everyone else. There aren’t enough medical resources, or beds in hospital, to cover all the needs. Older people often have property, or money, which they might feel would be more strategically used by younger relatives. Justin Welby again:

A change in the law would place very many thousands of vulnerable people at risk. Age UK asserts that some 500,000 elderly people are abused in the UK each year. It is impossible to ensure that they and other vulnerable people would not be placed under pressure to end their lives prematurely in ways that proposed safeguards cannot hope to detect.

We know from the US states of Oregon and Washington that between 40% and 60% of those who used legally prescribed lethal drugs to end their lives cited concern that they would be a burden on their families as a factor in their decision to bring their lives to a premature end.

And although the campaigns are being waged on behalf of the terminally ill, when you look at most of the high-profile cases reported in the media of people who demand assisted suicide, you see that by far the majority do not have a terminal condition at all. And in all the countries where laws have been passed to allow the terminally ill to die, the laws have later been extended to cover people who are disabled but not terminally ill. This is why the disabled organizations are so unanimously opposed to changing the law.

8. "Dignity" does not mean "choosing death"

“Death with dignity” implies that an unchosen death loses all dignity. Why? Grace Middleton wrote in the Australian Spectator:

As someone who has seen the ugliness of a slow demise, I reject the notion that dignity can be measured by the level of pain or the speed in which the individual dies. My Grandpa’s dignity was inherent in his worth as a human being – it wasn’t diminished by having others care for him and it wasn’t neutralised by him no longer contributing to his community in a manner some may have deemed productive.

Dignity is in the eye of the beholder. When treated with respect, older people suffer no loss of dignity in their dying.

9. What about those who are left behind?

People who commit suicide always underestimate the pain their departure will cause a whole network of other people. It’s no different when the death is assisted.

When Simon Binner arranged his own death in Switzerland, his wife Debbie went along with it. But later she wrote:

People would say, "isn't it brilliant, that he knows what he wants and can have it". But it was never that simple. I didn't care what state he was or might be in, he was my husband - as valuable in a wheelchair as anyone out of it.

I still wonder: did we do enough to make him want to stay longer?

Simon's decision was never just about an illness - it made us grapple with the whole of point of human existence, and consider the sanctity of life itself….

Watching him plan his own death, while I still wanted more time, was overwhelmingly traumatic. He had rights, but how much of his life was mine?...

I would still have preferred him not to go. There is a beauty in caring for someone who is dying. I loved Simon, I would have loved to nurse and cherish him to the end.

Ultimately I felt my choice was: let him commit suicide in some awful way in front of our family; or let him have his wish of an assisted death. The latter seemed the lesser of two stark evils.

10. The disabled are vulnerable - and frightened

Not a single UK organisation for disabled people supports assisted dying for the terminally ill. Not Dead Yet UK quotes research that shows that in the Netherlands, despite supposed legal safeguards, nearly a quarter of intentional killings of patients happen without request. And the rate is going up. Disabled people fear that if they are ever in a state where they are physically unable to speak for themselves, someone else will make the judgment that their lives are not worth living any more.