The Growing Danger of Assisted Suicide

Rick Plasterer on January 17, 2025

Assisted suicide has been an issue before the general public for at least the last generation but is now emerging as a more potent and insidious threat in the 2020s. It is potent because more jurisdictions have legalized it or are considering legalizing it (most notably Great Britain), giving the proposal some momentum. It is insidious because it is presented as an appeal to personal freedom and the efficient use of resources but finally involves an assessment of quality of life to determine who is put to death.

At its core, the battle lines on this issue are drawn very much on a social liberal/social conservative basis, familiar from the long-running and still ongoing abortion battle. Is human nature real, or is it merely constructed over the millennia, and subject to limitless social engineering? But as with the transgenderism controversy, there is substantial support for the immutability and sanctity of human nature from people and organizations in the general public, making the issue as yet undecided and discussable in the public arena.

The Moral Problems with Assisted Suicide

Ryan Anderson, with the Heritage Foundation nearly a decade ago identified four major moral problems with physician assisted suicide. These are that it would: 1) endanger the weak and vulnerable, 2) corrupt the practice of medicine and doctor-patient relationships, 3) compromise family and intergenerational commitments, and 4) betray human dignity and equality before the law.

In elaborating on this in a separate article, Anderson made the crucial distinction between withdrawing treatment that is “not worthwhile,” and taking action to cause or advance death, which is killing. Here it is important to notice that the “right to die,” or “assisted suicide” differs from euthanasia in that the doctor provides the means of killing, and death is self-administered, whereas euthanasia involves another party killing the patient. Anderson noted that Justice Neil Gorsuch has observed that in the Netherlands, the doctor’s assessment of quality of life determines if patient is to be euthanized. Doctors have killed patients without a request in thousands of Dutch cases and also failed to report thousands other cases, Anderson observed.

The number of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia cases keeps growing where it is legal. This is because once some justification for killing that seems reasonable to many people – such as terminal illness – is accepted and assisted suicide or euthanasia legalized in those cases, the logic of “a right-to-die” is extended to ever-wider groups of patients. Other justifications such as chronic pain, frail old age, dementia, or psychological depression then come to seem reasonable. Courts and legislatures are pressed to grant these exceptions as well. Whole classes or people are judged to be eligible for killing. And since there are cases in at least some of these categories in which patients are incapable of giving consent, involuntary euthanasia is advanced as a need. Anderson pointed out that British Baroness Mary Warnock argues for “a duty to die.” And with that change, the possibility of legally killing undesirables in society comes into view.

The Hippocratic commitment not to kill must remain inviolable, Anderson said. 21 professional health care associations and many other concerned associations opposed assisted suicide as of 2015. Doctors have a moral commitment to make whole, not simply a provider-consumer relationship providing whatever the patient wants. Additionally, he pointed out that physician-assisted suicide causes relatives to be tempted to want to get rid of a burdensome dependent, and so “undermines trust” among close relatives.

Anderson also observed that culture is corrupted by “the clear moral message … that some lives are ‘not worth living,’ and that some people have a duty to end their lives.” He noted that in the Netherlands, more requests for euthanasia come from families of patients than from the patients themselves. Physician-assisted suicide “is unavoidably a statement of who is unworthy of legal protection.”

He further observed that the bioethicist “Dr. Leon Kass highlights the absurdity of a ‘right to die’: ‘As the ultimate new right, grounded neither in nature nor in reason, it demonstrates the nihilistic implication of the new (‘postliberal’) doctrine of rights, rooted in the self-creating will.’” The modern doctrine of autonomy is what the American founders would have called license.  

“If we empower such people [i.e., professionals or government officials] to judge other people’s lives as worthless, how long will it be until the choice for death under certain circumstances becomes an obligation—perhaps enforced by other people. Thus, an incoherent ‘right’ to assisted suicide might very well result in a duty to have oneself euthanized.”

Anderson concluded that “the most profound injustice of PAS is that it violates human dignity and denies equality before the law.” Palliative care rather than death is recommended for suffering people.

Experience in Canada

The Canadian experience, where euthanasia as well as assisted suicide is legal is instructive in understanding where the regime of legalized killing goes. Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program began in June of 2016. Each year the number of people put to death has increased, with a total of 44,958 killed by the end of 2022. This is a common experience with legalizing euthanasia, as is the expansion of justifications for assisted suicide/euthanasia. Originally authorized for terminally ill patients, this was expanded to include those with a “grievous and irremediable condition.” The next addition of the mentally ill to the list of people who can be killed has so far been stopped but is slated to happen in 2027.

People with disabilities accounted for 33.5% of terminally ill patients who were euthanized, and 58.3% of non-terminal patients euthanized in Canada in 2023. Additionally, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Canada reports that “homelessness, isolation, and fear” drive some euthanasia deaths (perhaps a “grievous” but not necessarily “irremediable” condition), while the poor were found to be at risk of coercion to end their lives. It has been estimated that as many as 25% of MAiD providers in Ontario may have broken the law. The increase in euthanasia in Canada is such that 1 in 20 deaths were the result of euthanasia in 2023, while assisted suicide saw a 16% increase.

The Ongoing Debate in Great Britain

It is in Great Britain where the battle over assisted suicide is perhaps most intense today. On November 29, 2024, the British House of Commons passed “in principle” a bill to allow doctors in England and Wales to assist patients with less than six months to live to kill themselves. In the British parliamentary system there remains committee hearings, an additional third reading, and action by the House of Lords before the bill becomes law, so whether it will be enacted in its present form or enacted at all remains uncertain.

The majority of British public favors palliative and end-of-life care over assisted suicide. The British Christian advocacy organization Christian Concern has listed 12 strong reasons to oppose assisted suicide, several of which have already been mentioned. The public seems to understand the danger of coercion to vulnerable people Christian Concern referred to, with 58% of the public saying vulnerable groups will feel pressure to agree to end their lives. Another 56% say the current state of NHS will push some people to assisted suicide, and 57% say lower cost of suicide compared to palliative care would push people to suicide. The fact that the Commons passed with bill with a majority of the public opposed is likely due to the current Labour government, which is influenced by left-leaning elites wedded to the idea of moral autonomy, but as noted above, there remains a possibility of stopping the bill.

While emotional stories of “lived experience” often drive culture war issues, they exist on the side of traditional morality as well as the side of moral autonomy. The Christian Institute’s linked article cited the speech of Blair McDougall, a Labour MP who opposed the bill. As already noted, protections included in assisted suicide/euthanasia laws tend to be ineffective over time, because once relief of suffering becomes a reason for homicide on some basis, the imperative of relieving suffering demands an increasing number of bases justifying homicide. McDougall observed that disabled people have had “Do Not Resuscitate” entered on their medical records without their permission and have been told they would be “better off dead” on the street.

But decidedly less emotional, more material reasons can begin to drive debate once assisted suicide has a measure of acceptance. A report of academics in Scotland (not covered in the assisted suicide bill being debated in the Westminster Parliament) claimed that it would be “irresponsible” not to consider assisted suicide as a “moneysaver” for the British National Health Service. This in turn was criticized by Dr. Gordon MacDonald, Chief Executive of Care Not Killing. He said that “very quickly the argument moves from that of personal autonomy to doctors and nurses making value judgments about the quality of other people’s lives while seeking to save money and tackle so-called ‘bed blocking’ in health services.” It was also noted that the Scottish academics claimed that better organ donations would be available from people who died by assisted suicide (something which is now possible in Belgium and the Netherlands).

One of the most incisive discussions on the immorality and dangers of assisted suicide recently appeared between Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Jewish scholar Irene Lancaster. In it, Williams pointed out that lives are being assessed on a financial basis. There is no evidence from jurisdictions outside U.K. “that safeguards are stable.” Such justifications as “mental distress” and “wishes of young people” will help break down safeguards. Lancaster added that “a desire to die becomes a duty to die … Relatively young people are being asked to give up their lives in Canada rather than undergo routine, minor surgery.” She sees the current push for assisted suicide and euthanasia as “very similar to the methods used in Nazi Germany to hasten the death of the weak, feeble, infirm, old and handicapped. Later, this same approach was used on the Jews en masse, who were also regarded as being essentially defective. What do you think of this state of affairs?”

Williams responded that “that phrase ‘essentially defective’ is important … one of the risks is that we end up in effect defining certain conditions as ‘defective’; if you suffer in this way, the governing assumption is that you ought to be ready to die. Now of course the legislation is supposed to be about increasing choice, not about the state’s power to take life … But the question that still haunts me is the risk of changing the ground rules in a way that gives some people the right to decide what counts or what should count as a condition that makes life not worth living … Prolonging life at all costs is not a religious or ethical priority. But the base line we have hitherto held is that there is a difference between good and compassionate medical practice as we have known it – increasing sedation, withdrawing certain supports and so on – and actually initiating a fresh process whose primary aim is to end life. That is the new norm, and I don’t think its implications have been fully weighed.”

Responding to the Commons vote in principle for assisted suicide the day after it was taken, Ross Hendry, CEO of Christian Action Research and Education (CARE) in Great Britain said that legalizing assisted suicide will “create a two-tier society where suicide prevention doesn’t extend to all people.” He also said that there are “no safeguards” to “rule out the coercion of vulnerable people, and people ending their lives because they feel like a burden.” Parliament should instead aim at “excellent, universally accessible, end-of-life and palliative care, and stronger support for marginalized groups.” Christian apologist David Robertson observed that “there will be enormous pressure on the elderly ‘to do the right thing’ and ‘save the NHS’ [the National Health Service] or ‘save their inheritance for the kids.’” 

Conclusion

Assisted suicide (sometimes euphemistically called “assisted dying”) is advancing through socially liberal jurisdictions in this country and elsewhere, as noted earlier in this article. That it is not advancing more rapidly is perhaps due to the fact that after considerable experience with the homosexuality, abortion, and transgenderism battles, more people are aware that hard cases of difficult “lived experience” are not necessarily the basis of good law.

While assisted suicide and euthanasia proposals appeal for relief of suffering, they are, as Leon Kass noted above, in fact advanced on a nihilistic, post-liberal doctrine of autonomy (or self-will). There is thus no small hypocrisy in the claim of advocates of assisted suicide and euthanasia, which Rowan Williams noted, that the conflict is simply a matter of religious dogma versus liberation.  But as with the other issues just noted, there are good reasons to oppose either assisted suicide or euthanasia. Presented as rational solutions to irremediable pain and suffering, assisted suicide and euthanasia take away God’s gift of life, and advance – sometimes with, sometimes without consent – the most irremediable change of all – death. Faithful Christians and others of goodwill will stand for life and oppose the legalization of killing as a solution to life’s difficulties.

  1. Comment by Ilyas Haddad on January 17, 2025 at 12:47 pm

    I’m on year three of watching my mother deal with dementia. The experience has left me profoundly depressed, cynical, and desperate to find a place where I can be given medical aid in dying just to make sure I never suffer through such a condition. Unfortunately the United States is nowhere close to legalizing MAID for alzheimers and dementia. Canada is improving (thanks mostly to Quebec). Switzerland is really the best (only) option for those who share my philosophy on this issue.

  2. Comment by Tim Ware on January 17, 2025 at 7:29 pm

    This is a complicated, multi-faceted issue. One aspect is that medical advances that prolong life often have the effect of prolonging death. Another issue regarding medical advances that prolong life is that they make any kind of natural death impossible. Medical advances have happened fast, and we have not taken the time to back off and consider the ethical and practical ramifications of a medical “war on death.” As a result, we often get knee-jerk, over simplistic reactions. This situation has been exacerbated by the fact that since the mid-19th century or so, much of organized Christianity has considered medical science to be the modern continuation of the healing ministry of Jesus and has basically given modern medicine ecclesiastical status.

    I profited from reading the book “Die Wise” by Stephen Jenkinson. While not from a Christian perspective, the book does a good job of trying to think through the many complicated issues from many different angles. One doesn’t have to agree with everything in the book to benefit from it.

  3. Comment by David on January 19, 2025 at 10:54 am

    Fortunately, I live in a state that allows “living wills” and healthcare proxies. I have made provision not to be kept alive by machinery and not to be resuscitated. I intend to die only once. The medical outcome of extreme measures is often not very good in any event.

    Assisted suicide should ideally be the choice of a patient in serious medical decline. It should not be used where a person is temporarily despondent. However, a sudden debilitating event can leave one in a vegetative state without the ability to make medical decisions. Having a family member or another person who can follow your instructions is important.

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