Great Britain Embraces the Culture of Death

“Always be inspired in your decisions by the conviction that life should be nurtured and protected from its conception until its natural end. You will be recognized as Catholic doctors by your defense of the inviolable dignity of every human person.” ― Pope St. John Paul II, Letter to the Italian Catholic Physicians’ Association

Despite the truth that human dignity is intrinsic, not contingent, and that proper medical care adheres to the first principle of medicine, primum non nocere, and is thus always life-affirming, the British House of Commons, by a vote of 330 to 275, approved on November 29 a bill in support of state-sanctioned assisted suicide. If it survives heavy scrutiny and approved by a final vote, the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will be enacted.

Supporters of the bill, according to the Associated Press, believe the law would provide “dignity” to the dying and “protect the vulnerable.” As Kim Leadbeater, the bill’s main sponsor said during the debate: “Let’s be clear, we’re not talking about a choice between life or death, we are talking about giving dying people a choice about how to die.”

However, pro-life activists warn that the most predictable consequence of legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide will be the stripping away of the guardrails protecting the weakest, most vulnerable, and marginalized members of society. Though expressing limits in its current iteration, once the bill is legalized and its mindset accepted, access to euthanasia will be widened. It will establish a “right to die” principle, granting a person absolute autonomy over their life, or declaring “an obligation to die.”

Assisted Suicide Makes Death A “Treatment”

This concern was articulated by Danny Kruger, a member of the British Parliament, who said that members should do better for their nation’s terminally ill than to provide a “state suicide service.” Kruger challenged and warned his colleagues, saying that “[they] are the people who protect the most vulnerable in society from harm, and yet [they] stand on the brink of abandoning that role.” As sentinels, they should, instead, offer the sick and dying safeguards, such as palliative care as they face their final days.

With the acceptance of an anti-life mentality, genuine care that respects and defends human dignity at all stages is ultimately rejected. Instead, those suffering are increasingly pressured to choose death, health care providers whose vocation is to serve life become accomplices in a crime against the weak and vulnerable, and health care systems no longer pursue ways to licitly alleviate suffering, or address the underlying causes of suffering, which in some cases are often not even medical in nature.

Death becomes the preferred “treatment” for forms of suffering that could, and should, be addressed using means that respect the incomparable value of human life, and not treat it as a thing to be discarded.

Bishops Uphold Life Affirming Palliative Care

In anticipation of the recent vote, the Catholic Bishops of England, Wales, and Scotland gave clear teaching on how society, especially those serving in government, are to regard the weak and vulnerable, especially the sick and suffering. The bishops say,

People who are suffering need to know they are loved and valued. They need compassionate care, not assistance to end their lives. Palliative care, with expert pain relief, and good human, spiritual, and pastoral support, is the right and best way to care for people towards the end of life.

Sadly, in today’s modern, utilitarian culture, the elderly, sick, and dying are being made to feel that they are burdens, a problem for their families and society; they are told they are unwanted. “People are being presented as a problem,” Archbishop John Wilson of Southwark says, and they are treated “as a burden, a statistic. Something we can deal with through ending their life.”

The archbishop continues to say,

Where is the dignity in that? Where is the love in that? As followers of the Lord Jesus, we must be bold in our efforts to uphold, respect, and protect every human life from conception until natural death, because if we don’t stand up and value the dignity of human life, who will?

The bishops make visible the radical difference between assisted suicide and palliative care. The first directly intends the patient’s death. In assisted suicide, physicians aid the patient by prescribing a “medication” so they can intentionally kill themselves. This act is never morally permissible. It is a failure of love, a reflection of a “throwaway culture” in which “persons are no longer seen as a paramount value to be cared for and respected” (Fratelli tutti, no. 18).

Pope Francis Condemns Euthanasia as False Compassion

“Authentic palliative care,” says Pope Francis, “is radically different from euthanasia, which is never a source of hope or genuine concern for the sick and dying.” Palliative care involves medical care and pain management for the symptoms of those suffering from serious illnesses, while respecting the patient’s intrinsic dignity. This kind of care refrains from taking actions that directly intend to end the life of the patient. Here physicians and health care providers care for their patients at all stages of their lives. When there is nothing medically that can be offered to change the course of a disease, they remain in solidarity at the patient’s side, accompanying them to the end of their lives. They neither hasten the patient’s death nor provide means to end life.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are a defeat for all. We are called never to abandon those who are suffering, never giving up but caring and loving to restore hope.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) June 5, 2019

Life is not ours to dispose of. Assisted suicide devalues life and removes “us” from the conversation and obligation to be stewards of life.

“Indeed, euthanasia is often presented falsely as a form of compassion,” says Pope Francis,

Yet ‘compassion,’ a word that means ‘suffering with,’ does not involve the intentional ending of a life, but rather the willingness to share the burdens of those facing the end stages of our earthly pilgrimage. Palliative care, then, is a genuine form of compassion, for it responds to suffering, whether physical, emotional, psychological or spiritual, by affirming the fundamental and inviolable dignity of every person, especially the dying, and helping them to accept the inevitable moment of passage from this life to eternal life.

The goal of palliative care is to address and promote effective relief of pain and suffering, not to eliminate the sufferer.

Assisted Suicide is a Slippery Slope

The devaluation of human life advanced by the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is a symptom of an already existing anti-life mindset – i.e., the spirit of death – at work in Great Britain and most of Europe. As mentioned in a previous Spirit & Life post, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), a non-ministerial department responsible for collecting and publishing statistics related to the economy, population, and society, reported that the number of children born to British mothers has fallen to a record low, collapsing by 25% over the past 15 years. According to the report, the British fertility rate in 2023 fell to just 1.44 children per woman, far below the 2.1 needed for population replacement. It is the lowest rate recorded since the government began tracking figures in 1938. Sadly, most people in Great Britain have rejected the gift of life, which has affected their view of life itself.

As Albert Schweitzer once said, “If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all life.” Once life is devalued, as it is through the violence of abortion and euthanasia, there are no limitations to our actions. This anti-life mindset disregards the inviolable right to life, diminishing our ability to appreciate and respect every life: rich or poor, strong or weak, young or old, born or preborn. It desensitizes individuals and society from cultivating reverence owed to every human being, which inevitably leads to a fragmented view that devalues the sanctity of life itself and fails to offer true compassion.

Although Leadbeater, as reported by the Associated Press, insists that her bill contains “robust” safeguards to protect the vulnerable and weak, we know expansion of this suicide contagion is inevitable. As we have experienced in other countries, like Belgium and the Netherlands, restrictions loosen and assisted suicide becomes culturally acceptable, thus opening the practice to all, for any reason, and under any circumstance, while placing immeasurable pressure upon the elderly, sick, and dying. Once the “right-to-die principle” is established, it will soon be widened. Look no further than Canada for proof of this slippery slope, as even the homeless are now offered suicide as a means to escape their plight.

Catholic Teaching on End of Life Care

Every person consciously or subconsciously holds a specific point of view, which is established, influenced, and supported by anthropology, ideology, philosophy, theology, and religion. This perspective affects every aspect of one’s life, serving as a compass and a driving force governing decisions, attitudes, behaviors, convictions, and directions, thus providing the fundamental building blocks upon which one builds their life.

While the Catholic Church recognizes life as a good, patients and physicians are not required to do everything possible to avoid death if a life has reached its natural conclusion and medical intervention would not be beneficial. She teaches the importance of preserving life, and also teaches that futile or excessively burdensome treatments may be withheld or discontinued with an upright conscience. But “an action or an omission which of itself or by intention causes death, in order that all suffering may in this way be eliminated” is never licit (Declaration on Euthanasia, 1980; Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2277). 

The Church understands life is a gift, and every person has intrinsic and immutable dignity. Human dignity is an undeserved gift, not an earned status; it flows from who we are, not from what we can or cannot do. This view shapes our approach seeing health care as a community of healing and compassion, where care is not limited to the physical but “extends to the spiritual nature of the person” (Ethical and Religious Directives, Part II). And the Church understands that “without health of the spirit, high technology focused strictly on the body offers limited hope for healing the whole person” (Directives, Part II).

Grounded in the moral tradition and guided by aspects of Catholic social teaching, the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services – commonly referred to as the ERDs – serve as a moral compass for Catholic health care. The ERDs assist those facing emerging medical dilemmas and questions facing the ministry regarding social justice, technology, etc.

Healthcare in Light of Eternity

Advocates for assisted suicide claim they don’t want people to suffer, giving the impression that any opposition simply wants people to suffer. But this is false and reveals a shallow view of life and of the human person. Catholic healthcare faces death with the confidence of faith, giving witness to the belief that God has created each person for eternal life. We assert that we have a duty to preserve our lives, but that duty is not absolute. And the use of medical technologies is judged in light of the Christian meaning of life, suffering, and death.

As the Catechism says,

Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of “over-zealous” treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected (no. 2278).

Catholic health care helps people prepare for death, providing necessary information for ethical decision-making (ERD, no. 55). We understand that a person may forgo extraordinary or disproportionate means of preserving life. There is no moral obligation to employ disproportionate or burdensome treatments (ERDs, nos. 56-57), and we respect the free and informed judgment of the competent patient to accept or refuse life-sustaining treatment (ERD, no 59). We assure appropriateness of effective pain management, even when death may be indirectly hastened through use of analgesics (ERD, no. 61).

“Quality of Life” Rejects Human Dignity

The Church rejects a “quality of life” approach, as offered by the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, that wrongly shifts the focus from whether medical treatments are beneficial or burdensome to patients, to whether patients’ lives are beneficial to them or to us, i.e., a burden. Physicians and health care workers have a vocation to serve human life, not be dispensers of death. In providing medical care we should not be morally deciding whether this life or any life is good or bad but should be objectively discerning the medical factors surrounding that life, then offering licit treatment and care that best helps that person.

The problem with the concept of whether life is of a good or bad “quality” is that it is based on peoples’ differing subjective judgments, which are arbitrary. Using the “quality of life” criteria means that human life has no inherent value or dignity; its worth is measured by its usefulness to others. However, the value of a person’s life cannot be made subordinate to any judgment of its quality expressed by others. Life has inherent dignity, regardless of its visible “quality,” and it calls out to us for the care owed to all persons. 

As Christians, we believe that every human life has immeasurable worth and is unique and irreplaceable; there is no exception to this understanding. Also, one never loses this value, and it is not bestowed by others. In other words, human persons are ends in themselves, always to be respected, protected, loved, and served. It is therefore very unfortunate that advocates of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill advance a sentiment, a contagion that gives the impression that heath issues somehow make life not worth living or rendering it a value not worth preserving. This sentiment is based on a “quality of life” criteria and expresses a value judgment, which disregards and falsifies the immutable and inherent dignity of the human person. It must be rejected. Please join me in praying that pro-life advocates in the House of Commons and United Kingdom will prevail in advocating for life and promote true compassion for the elderly, sick, and dying.