The case for terminating life: ten arguments

1. Sometimes we do end life, so it isn't sacrosanct

Those who argue against merciful termination often say that all human life is sacred, and can be terminated only God. But actually we don’t live that way. Many of us as Christians are prepared to take someone else’s life if it’s a matter of self defence, or defending our country. And we are prepared to risk loss of life through the social structures we have built, such as transport systems; we recognize that some lives will be lost in train crashes and air disasters, but it doesn’t stop us taking those risks and operating those systems. So clearly ending life isn’t such a dreadful thing that we never contemplate it.

2. We interfere with the normal course of life - that's what medicine does

Christians are usually quite happy to permit medical techniques which have a massive effect upon the length of our lives; if we can prolong our life span, we’re happy, and take it as a gift from God. But if we are prepared to allow this kind of interference with the normal course of nature, why can’t we allow intervention to allow death when a patient no longer wishes to be artificially kept alive? If we aren’t disobeying the will of God by intervening to lengthen lives, why is it disobedience if we intervene to shorten them mercifully?

3. A loving God doesn't torture people, and nor do his people

Why would God want a person to be tortured by being kept alive unnecessarily and painfully? If there’s no hope of anything apart from further deterioration and loss of dignity, how could it be the will of God for a shameful, excruciating life to continue?

4. Living the Christian life involves making difficult choices

There are no proof texts in the Bible which address this issue with a “thou shalt not”. Opposition to euthanasia is based on traditional adherence to Augustine’s interpretation, and inferences drawn from a few verses here and there which are really talking about something else. And God doesn’t always give us black-and-white rules for social situations; rather he expects us to make moral choices, using the teachings of Scripture as a basis. I am responsible to God for making honest choices, rather than blindly following the choices other people make, and sticking safely to established tradition and practice. If I ignore real suffering and despair because I’m prejudiced by traditions based on very little Scripture, I’m failing to show compassion in my thinking.

5. If we respect people, we respect their choices

Our faith requires us to respect every other human being, and that means respecting their choices even when we believe they are the wrong ones. As the rich young ruler walked away from Jesus, the Lord didn’t move a muscle to bring him back. And so when people – especially those who do not share our faith – tell us that they are tired of this life of pain and want to leave it, we should accept their rational decisions to refuse burdensome and futile treatment. We cannot insist that we know better, and impose our Christian convictions on people who do not believe in our God.

Brittany Maynard, a Californian wife whose family moved to Oregon when she was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2015, made a video which said this:

Achieving some control over my passing is very important to me. Knowing that I can leave this life with dignity allows me to focus on living. It has provided me enormous peace of mind. The inevitability of death is universal... The decision about how I end my dying process should be up to me and my family, under a doctor's care. How dare the Government make decisions or limit options for terminally ill people like me.

6. There would be no "slippery slope"

Opponents of assisted death often claim that it would not take long for legislation to be broadened until people were dying who had not chosen to do so. Any move towards assisted death would cheapen human life and make it easier for human beings to be treated as a commodity. But this needn’t happen. There was no “slippery slope” in Nazi Germany; the killing of mentally ill people was not prepared for in any way; it simply started with an edict from Hitler. Experience in several countries is showing that, if legislation is properly drafted and safeguards are built in, there is no reason to fear that human life will lose its value. Indeed, in states like Oregon and countries like Holland, palliative care is much better than in other countries where ending your own life is forbidden.

7. Palliative care isn't enough

Opponents of euthanasia often claim that the hospice movement has shown a different way to die with dignity, through palliative care. But you can’t remove all pain. Lord Avebury, former Liberal Chief Whip, says: “"I think it's obvious that palliative care is not effective in 100% of cases. Figures have been quoted that between 85% and 90% where you can effectively counter pain with medication. Whatever the number may be, it is unthinkable that we should not take measures to enable people to alleviate their own suffering." Other estimates are that only 60-70% of pain can be relieved.

This is partly because dying people pose unforeseen medical problems. "Once out of the standard [drug] regime we don't know which combination to use next for this patient," says Bill Noble, medical director of the Marie Curie Cancer Care and a palliative care doctor for more than 30 years. "If you haven't got complete pain control it isn't necessarily because the doctor doesn't know what he is doing. There are people who never have their pain relieved."

And there isn’t enough palliative care to go round. Few people without a cancer diagnosis get palliative care: only 20% in Scotland, according to research by Edinburgh University and Marie Curie Cancer Care last September.

8. Suicide is not condemned in the Bible, but by Christian tradition

The Bible does not condemn people for taking their own life. Think of Samson slaying the Philistines by his death, or Saul commanding his armour-bearer to end his life. There is no critical comment made; the story is simply told without any criticism.

Surely Christians should be less worried about hanging on to their physical life than non-believers! If we truly believe that death has been defeated in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, then we should be more willing, not less, to relinquish the pain and sorrow of this life and go to our reward.

Perhaps the arrival of terminal illness could be seen as God’s way of telling us that it’s now time to leave this world behind and approach his presence.

9. We're in a new situation, thanks to our success in prolonging life

We should not quote verses such as “As no one has power over the wind to contain it, so no one has power over the time of their death” (Ecclesiastes 8:8) to “prove” that it’s wrong to take control of our death. This was an observation made at a time when it was impossible to do what we can do easily today. And it’s talking about people who want to stay alive – not those who wish to die. We need to recognise that modern medicine has changed the conditions of life so that they are unrecognisable from the circumstances in which Bible people lived. (For example, “threescore years and ten” is no longer the standard life expectancy these days in many countries.)

And so we need to learn to apply the principles of Scripture rather than their literal wording – just as we do when we read admonitions to slaves to honour their masters, or to take a little wine for our stomach’s sake. The staggering power of modern medicine has created potential dilemmas that people of former ages never had to consider.

The lifespan of a shepherd in Bethlehem, when Jesus was born, was on average 27 years. Not many of them lived long enough to suffer the geriatric conditions that are all too common today. We can’t apply the Bible thoughtlessly in the same way in a different age.

10. We kill animals for their good; why should we stand by while humans suffer?

Why should we be more merciful to sparrows than to humans, if Jesus says we are far more valuable? Yet vets are allowed to put down animals day after day, and we see it as a good thing. When Tony Bland was given the legal right to die in 1993, he starved to death through withdrawal of food and water, since nobody was allowed to give him anything to cut short his suffering. It takes 7-14 days to die in that way, and Tony was still capable of feeling pain. This is not a good thing to inflict on anyone.

When Marion Ploch died pregnant in a car accident, she was artificially kept alive so that the baby could be delivered. Nurses washed her three times a day, feeding tubes pumped egg white, fat, carbohydrates and vitamins into her system, and her dead body was forced to do exercises to keep it fit enough to deliver her child. In the end the baby miscarried anyway. But should a human body be treated as a baby-producing machine? Would it not be more dignified to allow the mother and child to die together?