Wolverhampton church leaders write an open letter to Rob Marris MP opposing his Assisted Dying bill
The Assisted Dying bill will come before parliament again
soon. It has been put forward by Rob Marris, MP for Wolverhampton South West.
We respect the great work he has done as
a constituency MP in his previous term of office, congratulate him on his
recent return to parliament, and rejoice in his close connection to us as
individuals, churches and a network. Nevertheless, as ministers and churches in
the city that Rob Marris represents we felt we needed to make some kind of
response to the issues raised by this bill, and the threat we see in it to some
of the more vulnerable members of society who may find themselves the
unintended victims of its consequences.
Below is the text of an open letter we
have addressed to Rob, along with the current list of signatories. Other
Wolverhampton Ministers wishing to sign can comment below, with the name of
their church and I will add them.
An open letter to Rob
Marris in response to his Private Member’s Bill on Physician Assisted Suicide
and his article published in the Express and Star 6th August 2015
Dear
Rob
Your
Private Members' Bill proposes to allow doctors to prescribe and administer
drugs to prematurely end the lives of 'terminally ill' patients. We appreciate
that at the heart of your Bill is the desire to reduce undue suffering in the
last days of peoples' lives. Although this is a noble aim we believe the Bill
will introduce far worse consequences for our society in the years to come.
What is dignity?
Before
examining the arguments, let’s begin with the word most associated with
assisted suicide and euthanasia – dignity. The pro-euthanasia lobby do not have
a monopoly on the word dignity! They persistently claim that the assisted death
of a terminally ill person is somehow more dignified than that of the person
who dies naturally. It is an attempt to apply emotional pressure on us all to
permit assisted suicide lest we should be viewed as heartless and uncaring. It
seeks to portray the death of someone who in any way suffers as somehow
‘undignified’, something we should be ashamed of permitting.
But
what is dignity? At its heart dignity means ‘worth’ or ‘respect’. It has a
moral component. Dignity is therefore measured by the way we actively treat
people. An assisted suicide is not a more dignified end to life than one which
has taken its natural course. It is we; it is society itself that endows a
person with dignity regardless of their health or sickness, not by bringing
their life to an end.
Who is protected?
The
main argument for your Bill is predicated on the basis that the law as it
stands is being broken by anyone helping the terminally ill to die and that
those who do so deserve to be protected by the law. The fundamental principle
that they are breaking is that all human life is valuable and should not be
taken away.
To
quote Judge Robert Rolf’s adage, ‘Hard cases make bad law’. The law as it
stands values every life as intrinsically worthy of our protection. In seeking
to offer a means of ending the life of a tiny minority who wish to claim that
right, your Bill does the opposite. It legally protects the practitioners of
assisted dying and removes legal protection from those who most need it; the
sick, the weak, the disabled. They are immediately deemed of less value than
the rest of us. That is why your Bill has been opposed by every disability
group in the country. Those who have given their lives to help the needy and
disabled, some of the very people you say you want to help, have emphatically
stated that they believe this is wrong. They more than anyone understand the
implications of your proposals and it is their voice you should be listening
to.
Good intentions, bad
consequences
You
are extremely confident that the safeguards proposed in your Bill will be
sufficiently robust to prevent any loosening of the terms of assisted suicide.
But in practice such 'treatment creep' will be inevitable. As Dr Karel Gunning,
a Dutch General Practitioner, states: “Once you accept killing as a solution
for a single problem, you will find tomorrow hundreds of problems for which
killing can be seen as a solution.” (1) Where legislation
similar to your Bill has been introduced, for example in Oregon in 2013, the
common reasons given for ending the individual's life have been very broad 93%
cited “loss of autonomy”, 89% “loss of enjoyment of life” and 73% “loss of dignity”(2)
There
are other examples where removal of the legal protection of life has led to
tragic and unforeseen consequences.
Euthanasia for ‘extreme cases’ was first introduced in the Netherlands
in 2002, but year by year it has been practised on more and more individuals,
now including people with dementia and depression. In Belgium euthanasia for
terminally ill children of any age was legalised in 2014, through the
administration of a lethal injection. Doctors in Belgium are now ending the
lives of an average of five people a day by euthanasia, 27% more than the
previous year. At the time this legislation was introduced in these countries,
the prospect of such outcomes was dismissed in the same way that warnings about
your Bill are being today.
In
a recent letter to one of us you dismissed this evidence as ‘a red herring’.
But your Bill on assisted suicide shares two crucial features with these laws
on Euthanasia on mainland Europe; firstly it removes the historic protection of
the law at the end of life and secondly, it changes the role of the medical
profession on whom we have trusted to heal and care, to now include
participating in the taking of life.
Unwelcome pressure
Your
Bill will introduce very unhealthy tensions between patients and their carers.
Patients will feel the need to give in to unwanted pressure to end their lives
from family and carers, most obviously because of financial concerns or a sense
of being a burden. In a recent study in
Washington in 2013, 61% of those who chose the assisted suicide route cited the
reason for doing so was because they felt themselves to be a burden to their
family.(3) Assisted suicide
introduced the notion of a life less worthy of continuing. On the carer's side
there is the very real risk of complicated grief, where a sense of relief is
mixed with guilt and ‘what ifs’.... Dr Edward Trudeau's aphorism surely still stands: “To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to
comfort always.”(4). Genuine care is the strongest natural elixir to
promote hope-filled life. Such an opportunity to care is terminated the moment
the fateful final solution is administered.
Measuring life
expectancy
There
are inherent dangers in seeking to measure how ‘terminal’ ‘terminal’ really is.
Your Bill makes provision for a terminally ill patient to take their life if
the patient, “as a consequence of that
terminal illness is reasonably expected to die within six months”. The body
at times demonstrates a remarkable ability to recover. Whilst generally, in the
case of terminally ill patients, this doesn't mean that they are cured,
nonetheless they can regain useful and even normal living for far longer than
might have been anticipated and where the focus is on physical function they
might be regarded as being 'normal'. What a terrible thing it would be to deny
somebody this possibility, which neither the patient or the carers and doctors
thought possible. Society is quick to grasp the concept of there being “just a
few months of life left”, but those in the medical profession know how
different the reality is.
Palliative Care
In
your article in the Express and Star you make the astonishing claim that the
introduction of assisted suicide would “put
pressure on local authorities to improve palliative care so that patients have
a real alternative to assisted dying”. That is like saying it would be good
to set some houses on fire in order to improve the efficiency of the fire
service! We find this a very disturbing argument for
someone to make. Why promote death in order to encourage life? The fact is
modern palliative care is already very effective at alleviating suffering of
the terminally ill and is improving all the time through the dedication of
those who value end of life care, not by the practice of assisted suicide.
Life is sacred
Finally
as Christian Ministers we believe that life itself is sacred and that the law
as it stands supports that belief. A change in the law would dishonour God’s
gift of life and lead into all sorts of unfortunate consequences for which we will be held responsible by a just
God. Yes, we will all die, but our role is not to shorten life but protect it
for its duration. We also believe that physical death itself is not the end. Through
his own death on the cross Jesus Christ holds out the prospect of eternal life
to all who believe and trust in him. To deny this truth is to believe that our
present existence is the sum total and we are masters of our own destiny – the
dismal claim at the heart of assisted suicide. As ministers in the city of the
MP proposing the bill, we have no choice but to speak out for the many who
disagree strongly with it and feel endangered by it.
11 Euthanasia and assisted suicide – A joint statement by
doctors and lawyers, Care not killing, 12Th October 2005
22 cmf
file 56, 2015
33 cmf
56 2015
44 cmf
file 56, 2015
Yours
sincerely,
Revd
Adrian Argile, Regional Ministry Team Leader, Heart of England Baptist
Association
Revd
Steve Faber, Moderator-Elect of the West Midlands Synod of the United Reformed
Church
Rev
John Howard, Chair of Wolverhampton & Shrewsbury Methodist District
Bishop
David McGough – Roman Catholic bishop with responsibility for Wolverhampton
Pastor
Emmanuel Kapofu, International Life Centre, Horsely Fields
Rev
Richard Merrick, Holy Trinity Heath Town
Rev
Dr. Ian Poole, Acting Rector of Busbury Parish
Rev
Jonathan Somerville, Tabernacle Baptist Church Wolverhampton
Pastor
Simon Taylor, Christian Life Centre, Blakenhall
Pastor
Steve Uppal, All Nations Christian Centre, Temple Street
Pastor
Tony Wastall, Lifespring Church, Chapel Ash
Rev
Robert Carter, St Aidans Church, Penn
Rev
Anthony Henson, Grace Church Wolverhampton, part of Catalyst / Newfrontiers
Rev
Jeremy Oakley, St Philip’s Church, Bradmore
Rev
Carl Rudd, St Joseph’s Church, Merry Hill, Wolverhampton
Rev
Sue Walker, Minister of Lea Road Community Church (URC)
Rev
Philip Robertson, St Jude’s Church, Wolverhampton
Rev
Gareth Regan, St Philip’s Church, Bradmore
Pastor
Ivy Kapofu, International Life Centre, Horsely Fields
Rev
Pippa Goldring, Holy Trinity Heath Town
Rev
Samuel Leach, St Alban’s Wednesfield
Rev
Alan Vincent, Life Groups of Chorley Chapel in Scotlands & Wednesfield
Pastor
Terry Wilkes, Windmill Community Church, Castlecroft
Pastor
David Coates-Smith, Lifespring Church, Chapel Ash
Rev
Hannah Colk, Tabernacle Baptist Church Wolverhampton
Rev
Preb. Ben Whitmore, St Bartholemew’s Church, Penn
Rev
Tim Mullings, Tettenhall Wood United Reformed Church
Father
Brendan Carrick, St Anthony’s Catholic Church
Pastor
Cassius Francis, Wesleyan Holiness Church Wolverhampton
Rev
Graham Smith, Church of the Good Shepherd, Low Hill
Bishop
Llewellyn Graham, Jubilee Christian Centre
Rev
Bill Mash, Team Leader Black Country Urban Industrial Mission
Pastor
Leon Etten, The Potter’s House Church
Wolverhampton
Pastor
John Price, Kingsway Church, Wombourne
Mr
Jon Beckett, Penn Christian Centre
Bishop
Theophilus McCalla, Gloucester Street Church
Pastor
Emmanuel Jones, Fountain of Grace Church Wolverhampton
Rev
Richard Espin-Bradley, St Luke’s Church, Blakenhall
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