Some time ago, I found myself sitting at a dinner opposite a Labour peer. We chatted over various things as the evening proceeded. Just before we were getting up to leave a new topic came up. \u201cI am a convinced campaigner for assisted dying,\u201d she said. \u201cAs a bishop, I suspect you\u2019re not. Why don\u2019t you think we should do it?\u201d Put on the spot, struggling to know what to say, and knowing I probably had one line to deliver as we stood up to leave, I said something like this: \u201cLife is a gift from God. It\u2019s not up to us to decide when it ends.\u201d She looked across at me with a pitying look and walked away, clearly unconvinced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve often wondered what I should have said. Lord Falconer suggests that only secular people like him are \u2018objective\u2019 and religious people like me or\u00a0Shabana Mahmood<\/a>\u00a0are biased and therefore our views are to be discounted. The idea that his secular perspective is not colouring his views, but that our religious ones are, or that he is not imposing his beliefs on others whereas we are, is of course, as\u00a0Isabel Hardman has argued<\/a>, philosophical nonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our religious beliefs shape our views, as his secular views shape his. The question is which perspective gives us a better, healthier and more coherent way of living together. I spoke recently to a key figure in the Church of England\u2019s response to Assisted Dying who told me in no uncertain terms that religious arguments simply don\u2019t wash in this debate. We have to use pragmatic and political ones that appeal to a wide audience. And so, the main arguments we have heard from church leaders and others against assisted suicide refer to the slippery slope argument: that legislation will inevitably in time become looser to include more candidates; care for the vulnerable, such as the elderly or the disabled who will feel pressurised into taking their own life, or, as the Health Secretary Wes Streeting has argued, the fact that palliative care is not yet robust enough in our health system to enable a proper choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><\/p> My thoughts on why religion matters in the assisted dying debate https:\/\/t.co\/SJBK4fUI3B<\/a><\/p>— Graham Tomlin (@gtomlin) November 27, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>