Good end-of-life care is better than legalising assisted suicide

A debate took place in the House of Commons Westminster Hall, the UK Parliament’s minor chamber. It was about death, or at least how we care for our dying. The debate was largely meant as an antidote to those that have a death-wish rooted in the fear of a chaotic, painful and above all uncontrollable decline out of time–who also hope to change the law in the UK to allow assisted suicide. This fear needs to be countered with love and decisive practical action which will see our society prepared to fight the indignity of death through care, in the hospice movement.

The debate was described by the MP chairing it as a model of propriety. Perhaps it mirrors the aesthetics of how we should talk about death and how we can counter the desire to seek an early self-ending. It is certainly how we need to talk about the matter as Christians. Too often the shrill “over my dead body” approach is used by Christian campaigning organisations who oppose abortion, say, but do not offer practicable and positive alternatives to the real or felt problems of those on the side of a misguided ultimatum of personal liberty.

Sir Roger Gale, the newly beknighted MP and present at the debate said: “May I thank all Hon. Members for the tone and the self-restraint that has been exercised this morning? ... We have managed to accommodate the views of 21 backbenchers... I regard that as exceptional. I hope that many people outside the Chamber will have heard the quality of the House of Commons at its absolute best.”

This is high praise from someone who has had 30 years’ experience serving his constituents in Parliament. To get 21 back benchers to speak and to do so briefly on any subject is not always easy in Westminster Hall, where getting 10 contributions into the allotted hour-and-a-half time slot can be quite a task for any chairman.

But it was not that feat so much as the intelligence of the contribution and tone of the debate that was so encouraging. The antidote to any attempt to cast assisting suicide into a narrative of compassion can only be trumped in two ways. First, by an overriding compassion and second, by pointing out what the desire of liberalisation entails. These two points are intertwined. It requires the intelligence to know what this discussion is about—it’s about our responsibility to society, not to individual liberty, since any change in the law would put pressure on the weakest to seek an end.

Secondly, it requires the understanding that this is a debate about aesthetics, or what it might mean to live with an embarrassing and often not very beautiful disease, to suffer the indignity of death. What is feared by those campaigners is a loss of control, but also a loss of control over the aesthetic and this can only be countered with a response of love. For somebody who is dying, it is only love that can reassure them that the indignity of death is not taken in an undignified way by those that love them.

While I am not sure how many people “outside the Chamber” heard the debate, it is one which will come around again in March. I recommend you read it for yourself here.