Rabbi Jeremy Gordon recently hosted a discussion on the newly published proposed legislation on assisted death – physician assisted suicide, at New London Synagogue. He was joined by Bishop Sarah Mullally, Prof Jules Wendon, Professor Julian Hughes and Imam Yunus Dudhwala, and guests from other local faith communities.
Rabbi Gordon says:
‘I’ve been interested to see there is now more conversation on this topic of importance in our own lives, the lives of those we love and in society at large, but still feel the scale and nature of what is being proposed is not being fully debated and even less so fully understood.
Alongside any religious issue around sanctity of life, there are three problems with the proposed bill.
One is that is presupposes an end-of-life journey that is not the lived experience of the vast, vast majority of people at the end of life. There is not ‘unbearable pain,’ in well managed palliative care environments and my experience is so often ‘that’ room is a place of peace and gratitude, even in pain. Legislation could change that entire culture and replace it with a pathway that feels un-editable.
Secondly, one of the legislative ‘safeguards’ is that there is a medical clarity about when the end of life is coming for a person with terminal illness. As Prof Jules Wendon said on the panel (and she used to run Intensive Care for London during COVID) medics are ‘rubbish’ at knowing when someone is going to die.
Thirdly, the other legislative ‘safeguard’ is that it’s possible to manage away fears around co-ercion. As Professor Hughes suggested: ‘who is going to do that? High Court judges? The legal profession might not be able to understand and manage the implications of coercion. Medical doctors? They simply don’t have the training (nor want to be in that line of work – for the most part).’
Instead, the lessons from international jurisdictions that have passed this legislation is that … death just happens, and the initial tightly worded legislation soon expands to cover many more cases.
Suffering is awful. We all deserve to feel valued, even at the end of our lives. Much needs to be done to address both of these deep needs in contemporary society. This legislation is not the path which will alleviate suffering and ensure the immense value of human life is preserved.’
