A society that
accepts assisted suicide needs to be aware that there are certain consequences
it must face. The issue is not only a
matter of an individual facing extreme challenges and wanting to end his or her
life. The issue is also about what kind
of people we wish to be: those who help the suffering end their lives or those
who help and comfort the suffering? What we say about assisting others in suicide, in other words, is also about who we are and what we wish to be.
Two of the
outcomes of a permissive society that endorses euthanasia are the increase in
suicides and an abuse of the system. In
a December, 2024 article in the National
Post, Miranda Schreiber provided the recent statistics about assisted
suicide in Canada:[1]
Health Canada’s Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in
Dying [MAID] in Canada last week revealed that over 15,300 Canadians died by
MAID in 2023, representing a 15.8 per cent increase in deaths from the previous
year. In 2023, MAID accounted for 4.7 per cent of deaths in Canada.[2]
Also, 622 of the deaths were for non-terminal illnesses. A survey of this
group revealed that 47.1% listed as one of the reasons for requesting assisted
suicide was their loneliness and isolation, while almost half stated that they
did not want to be a burden to family, friends, and caregivers. These are particular concerns for the
elderly: the median age for assisted suicide was 77.7 years.
In Quebec, 7.2%
of the deaths are by assisted suicide, and in British Columbia, 6.1% are.
The concerns
about abuses in assisted suicide in Canada are based on
reports of MAID being used in prisons while incarcerated people were
shackled to their beds, the program’s lack of legal oversight, disproportionate
representation of impoverished people receiving assisted suicide, and
health-care practitioners offering assisted suicide when patients asked for
support for living.[3]
In an open
letter, more than 100 Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Sikh women representing
various groups in the United Kingdom and Wales have warned that assisted dying
could become a new tool to use against marginalised persons, especially
women. Lesley Storey, the chief
executive of My Sister’s Place, has warned that women in abusive relationships
and seeking to end their lives are at risk of coercion to do so.[4] Personal choice in the matter of assisted
suicide is not something that exists apart from other relational dynamics, and
the threat of coercion from the perpetrators of abuse is real. The letter says,
It is the voices of the unheard, ignored, and marginalised that we are
compelled by our faith traditions and scriptures to listen and draw attention
to, in the pursuit of good law-making for the common good – legislation that
considers and protects the most vulnerable, not just those who speak loudest.[5]
The author of a bill in Parliament to introduce assisted dying in the UK, MP Kim Leadbetter, argues that women should be empowered to have autonomy over their own bodies throughout their lives and at the end of life.[6] This approach to moral issues is a feature of contemporary, Western ethics. In seeking to give individuals their freedom of choice, people shirk their own responsibilities, and the more they insist on this when people are vulnerable and need others, the worse the outcome. The catastrophe of assisted suicide in such situations is not a triumph for freedom but is a failure of social and relational responsibility. Branding this as an issue about freedom and women’s rights, with the tired old mantra about women having autonomy over their own bodies, moreover, is political chicanery. Such language unites the issue of suicide with abortion, and both acts are ultimately not about autonomy but about commandeering social assistance for one’s choices. The Graeco-Roman view of suicide as a courageous act has become an appeal for assistance from others, but assistance to end rather than endure suffering by ending life itself. When met with the 'our bodies' argument in ethics in Corinth, Paul responded, 'do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body' (1 Corinthians 6.19-20).
In countries
with government-supported, national health plans, assisted suicide could eerily
become directed and provided for by a government agency, like MAID in Canada. During the United Kingdom’s debates on
assisted suicide in 2025, the question was legitimately asked whether a
national death service might be set up, involving the National Health Service
and the judicial system. Furthermore, doctors
and nurses whose involvement in care for the sick or psychologically disturbed
would be required to participate in assisted suicide—as already seen in the
case of abortion. Another question is
whether legislation that introduces this practice into the health care system in
only a few situations might not be pressured into extending assistance for suicide to other situations. If, for example, at first the requirement for
providing assisted suicide is limited to terminally ill patients with six
months to live, one could see this time extended when patients in the same
condition request help to die after six months of suffering. If persons with physical issues are assisted
in dying, why not others with mental issues, and why not still others who are
lonely—as in Canada?
Concern over
government becoming involved in the first place with suicide is
legitimate. By definition, government is
an institutional power over the lives of citizens. A government that compassionately extends
health care to suffering citizens is not merely caring for its citizens but is
also exercising a benevolent power over them.
Equally, government health care that enters into the discussion of
assisted suicide introduces into the matter of institutional power. While advocates of assisted suicide might claim
that it is right to give individuals power over their own bodies, government
health care introduces the new angle of institutional power into the
practice. One should be alert to how the
institution may extend its use of power as a compassionate service to mandated
suicide in the interests of society.
If Iceland can
brag about how it has no people with Downs Syndrome because it aborts such
babies, why could a government not argue that it should eliminate suffering for
the elderly, terminally ill, and persons with certain psychological disorders
through ‘assisted suicide’, which may become mandated suicide? The reality is that institutions do not have
compassion. Individuals have compassion
and can construe their acts rightly or wrongly as compassionate. Agencies and governments have policies that
contribute to practices that might be compassionate, but they operate by rules
and policies.
Moreover, governments
have conflicting motives. Claiming
compassion or any other positive motivation, they also operate with concerns
over insurance and medical costs. They
are institutions, not humans offering care.
Legal guidance and guardrails intending to be compassionate are not the
same as showing a person compassion. An
objective judge is not a caring friend.
One might reflect that, while suicide was practiced in antiquity, it was
not a practice of government or other institutions. The modern proposals of governmental
involvement in assisted suicide cannot be guided by practices in
antiquity. The historical precedent of
government involvement with assisted suicide is, actually, Nazi Germany. The goal, of course, would be to offer death
without repeating the errors of Germany in the first part of the twentieth
century. Yet citizens ought to be
concerned over this modern notion of government involvement in the death of its
citizens.
The roles people
and agencies play are different. One
person’s courage in suicide might require a different virtue in another, a loved
one’s compassion. An agency might have the
goal of monetary gain for providing such assistance, like abortion
clinics. Agencies and institutions might
also claim to be acting on ideological grounds, like protecting freedom of
choice, individualism, rights, safety, and so forth. A government offering national health care
might have the goal of cutting costs to its own budget by reducing the number
of persons receiving ongoing care. Also,
an individual may be seen as courageous in choosing suicide, but does the
individual have hidden motivations, perhaps ones not even understood by himself
or herself? Could an invalid or elderly
person choose suicide so as not to burden the family caretakers? Perhaps the so-called courageous elderly
person without long to live needs a more compassionate friend to be with rather
than the person turning his or her compassion into assisting the person in
suicide. Might someone even be motivated
to commit suicide in order to have his or her organs donated to someone else,
and could such a practice, once introduced, then become coercive—the harvesting
of organs? Since suicide is more
noticeable in certain parts of the world, why would some entrepreneurs without
moral standards not see this as a lucrative industry?
A society
desiring assisted suicide brings various motivations, people, and groups
together with different moral arguments and purposes all toward the same
end. The issue is complex, and it also
differs from person to person. Not
everyone involved has the same moral purposes despite the arguments publicly
made about compassionate care, freedom of choice, women’s rights, and so
on. Moreover, what is clear in all this
is that the argument has shifted from the honour society of ancient Rome to the
clerically guided society offering pastoral care in suffering to the modern
society providing clinical and institutional care that is concerned to avoid
suffering to the government’s involvement in assisted suicide.
What understanding
of suffering shifts arguments from care to the ending of life? Is physical incapacity and pain the same as
psychological pain or anxiety? Even
further, what philosophical or theological understanding of suffering and of
life itself leads to an acceptance of suicide, assisted suicide, or, more
darkly, encouraged or mandated ‘suicide’ for certain populations?
Indeed,
providing a way for individuals to commit suicide says something about who we
are as a society, about our beliefs and the practices that follow from
them. We should be aware that theory
shaping practices is itself shaped by practices. Once a society, for whatever reasons, begins
to practice assisted suicide, its very practice will shape the culture and its
accepted reasoning. Once ‘the pill’ was
invented to prevent conception, society quickly changed its views—and therefore
its practices—about out-of-wedlock sex.
What will a society practicing assisted suicide begin to think about
life, suffering, compassion, care, responsibility, and so forth?
A Christian
understanding of suffering is different from other views. Consider what Paul wrote after facing a near
death experience, perhaps from a threatening crowd in Asia. He identifies eight aspects of comfort for a
Christian perspective on suffering:
1.
God’s comfort of the sufferer,
2.
comfort from the Christian
community,
3.
suffering persons sharing in
Christ’s sufferings and comfort,
4.
suffering for the sake of
others (for their salvation),
5.
individuals in the Christian community
sharing in each other’s sufferings and comfort,
6.
suffering that leads to a
greater reliance on God,
7.
hope that God will deliver one
from suffering, and
8.
helping others in their
suffering through the power of prayer for one another.
To quote:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our
affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction,
with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For
as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share
abundantly in comfort too. 6 If we
are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted,
it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same
sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we
know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.
8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the
affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our
strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we
had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves
but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly
peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver
us again. 11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give
thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.
The Christian
community and faith lead to a very different understanding of suffering and
compassion from what others will say about it.
Compassion means different things to different people based on their prior
commitments to a certain worldview. This
brings us back to our question: What sort of a community are we? Or, What sort of a community do we wish to be?
The Christian view of suffering is one that
can understand it theologically, communally, and in regard to the dynamics of lived
faith. This powerful trajectory of thought
contradicts arguments for assisted suicide and government assisted suicide especially.
The Christian witness to society at large
presses the question: What sort of society do we wish to be?
[1] Canada decriminalized assisted suicide in 2012.
[2] Miranda Schreiber, “It's being abused:' Group that led
campaign for MAID is now calling for safeguards,’ National Post 19 December,
2024); online: 'It's being abused:' Group that led MAID campaign calls for
safeguards | National Post
(accessed 3 January, 2025).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Cf. Harriet Sherwood, ‘Assisted dying could become “tool” to harm
women in England and Wales, say faith leaders,’ The Guardian (6 April, 2025); Assisted
dying could become ‘tool’ to harm women in England and Wales, say faith leaders
| Assisted dying | The Guardian (accessed 7 April, 2025).
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
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