Right to die? The ‘assisted dying’ debate

Right to Die? – The ‘assisted dying’ debate

Andrew Goddard. Grove Books on Ethics, Nottingham, 2025. 22 pages £4.95

Much of the current debate around the Private Member’s Bill due to be soon voted on in Parliament focuses on the many inadequacies of the bill as currently drafted, as both bad law and providing inadequate safeguards. Many objections are however dismissed as being purely a cover for religious views.

Dr Goddard’s short study interrogates on their own terms the language and logic of assisted dying, its assumptions and implications, and the slogan “My Life, My Choice”. He concludes that we do better to entrust our lives to God rather than playing God by destroying ourselves.

“My Life, My Choice” assumes and implies we can and should make our own rules for life rather than live within God’s laws and rules which are life-giving. The fact a decision is one’s own is far from ensuring it is good, right, in one’s best interests or should be accepted by others. The slogan undermines the very foundation of law which is established to limit individual decision-making.

The slogan also communicates that 'My Life“ equals ”My valuation of life". No longer does every human life have dignity and value because it is the life of a human. Its value depends solely on the individual’s self-evaluation.

Further, the slogan conveniently ignores that ‘assistance’ requires the involvement of others. These include those who would have to provide the relevant drugs and thus impact recruitment into the medical profession; and those who will have to live with the impact of ‘My Choice’ for rest of their lives, often causing great pain and distress. This reviewer notes that the current Bill does not require the patient’s family to be informed.

‘My Choice’ can also be subject to abuse, coercion and control. It also assumes that life could never get better than as currently being experienced.

As regards suffering and imminent death, ‘My Choice’ implies that a person’s own report of what counts as suffering for them is the basis on which someone is granted the right to die. It becomes ‘My suffering, my solution’.

Medically defined criteria bring their own problems. It will not always be possible to judge the likely length of such suffering and clinicians' predictions of the nearness of death are often inaccurate. The criteria will create two classes of human beings, those eligible for assisted dying and those not. Those excluded by the prevailing criteria will ask “Why should I be treated differently?”, giving rise to “the slippery slope”.

Christian teaching affirms the dignity of every human as the bearer of God’s image; that life is a gift from God; ‘Do no murder’; God shares our suffering in Christ; and Christ’s victory over death. The challenges of life are to be met with love, hope, faith, patience, gratitude, humility, surrender and courage; these enable a quite different approach to death than one shaped by stressing individual autonomy.

Review by Chris Sugden

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