Historian Andrew Roberts let the cat out of the bag in his House of Lords speech in favour of assisted suicide: getting Christianity out of the way and reverting to pagan morality would make suicide socially acceptable.
On September 12, peers began debating Labour MP Kim Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales after MPs narrowly backed it in the House of Commons in June by 314 votes to 291.
Lord Roberts of Belgravia said during the Bill’s Second Reading debate: “The commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’ can be suspended in exceptional circumstances, such as in wartime, and so it should be in the case of the horrendous pain of an irreversible, slow death. Wanting to avoid such excruciating pain is not selfish but a human right.
“Going back further in history, beyond Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, the theologians who proscribed suicide, the ancient Greeks and Romans recognised that there was nothing ignoble in it if the alternative is far worse.
“It should be up to the individual, along with their doctor and family, protected by robust safeguards and oversight mechanisms, but not up to the state or the Church, to decide whether he or she wants to escape pain and suffering in their final days. The autonomy to die on one’s own terms, not on those imposed by others, should not be denied any longer.”
Roberts, a Conservative peer, is a superb historian. His 2005 book, Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Gamble, and his 2009 book, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, are outstanding works of history writing.
It was therefore sad to see a British historian of such distinction extolling pagan Greece and Rome, and dismissing Christianity as a barrier to human autonomy, the unrestrained exercise of which is so prized by the permissive society.
Roberts is also the author of an acclaimed 2018 biography of the British War World II Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. How can the author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny fail to appreciate the formative childhood influence of his evangelical Christian nanny, Elizabeth Everett, on the future leader? It is very arguable that without her spiritual and moral guidance, Churchill would never have taken the courageous stand against antisemitism that he did in the 1930s when that evil was quite fashionable among the British upper classes.
It was heartening to hear Toby Young, also a Conservative peer, make a powerful speech against assisted suicide. Lord Young of Acton, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, shared the reservations of his sister, an NHS nurse who has spent much of her career working in palliative care, about the Bill:
“My sister acknowledges that, at some point, most palliative care patients express a wish to die, whether because of pain, nausea or extreme fatigue, because they are anxious about dying at home without adequate care or support, or because they feel they have become a burden on their families.
“However, in her experience, most of those patients change their minds when help does come, solutions are proposed and symptoms are alleviated, and they are grateful for the opportunity to spend extra time with their loved ones.
“It is providing terminally ill patients with these opportunities that makes the work of people in hospices so rewarding. It is why many of them do it. Their sense of vocation comes from wanting to improve the health and extend the life of their patients, not from accelerating their deaths.”
He disclosed his sister’s concern that trying to “integrate an assisted dying service into one of the most overstretched parts of the NHS, with the inevitable bureaucracy and delays, the forms incorrectly filled in, the unreturned phone calls and the missed appointments” would make “the lives of terminally ill patients even more miserable”.
He concluded: “She says that her job often feels like working in a war zone, and fears that the Bill, particularly as currently drafted, will only make things worse.”
Andrew Roberts is right, however. Ultimately, it is Christianity, with its belief that humanity is created by Almighty God in His image and that we are not the result of evolutionary chance, which stands in the way of assisted suicide.
The House of Lords could vote down Leadbeater’s Private Member’s Bill. Because it is not a Government Bill, peers are not bound by the parliamentary ‘Salisbury Convention’ under which the Lords does not block legislation promised in the governing party’s election manifesto.
But if the Lords merely amends the Bill and it goes back to the House of Commons next year, it is to be feared that a majority of MPs will be guided by the pre-Christian morality that Roberts apparently commends, and give assisted suicide the go-ahead.
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
