Yeovil / London, November 2024
Dear sisters and brothers,
You will no doubt be aware that a bill to legalise assisted dying was introduced to the
House of Commons and that it passed its second reading on 29 th November 2024 with a small majority.
The bill may have passed this reading but it is not yet law and as the majority was only 55 votes, only 28 MPs would need to be convinced to change their mind for the bill to be defeated. Therefore
(As Evangelical Baptists we are pro-life and therefore unhappy with this bill and) we ask you to do the following:
Share your concern with your congregation and other Christians
Mention this bill in your own prayers and in the church’s intercessions
Write to your MP to make them aware of the concerns of the Christians in this country
Wishing you every blessing in your ministry.
Yours in His service,
David Barnes
The article follows (a pdf can be downladed here)
Assisted Dying (Euthanasia)
A Bill to legalise assisted killing has been introduced to the House of Commons by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater and has its second reading on 29th November 2024: The Terminally Ill adults (End of Life) Bill.
You are welcome to use any of the following information to write to your own MP. (The following link may also help in contacting your MP: https://righttolife.org.uk/9ly3).
The statistics I have compiled under the “Slippery Slope” argument are mostly derived from The Christian Institute.
The slippery slope
The ‘slippery slope’ is inevitable with any form of Assisted Dying/Euthanasia. I will give some examples:
In the Netherlands, the key criterion of “unbearable suffering” is now understood much more broadly. There has been a marked increase in euthanasia cases for dementia (from 97 in 2013 to 336 in 2023)1 and for patients with psychiatric disorders (from 42 in 2023 to 138 in 2023). Hundreds of euthanasia cases have involved elderly people who were not seriously ill but had conditions associated with normal old age.2 Euthanasia has become so accepted that there are attempts to open it up to those who are simply ‘tired of life’.3
In Belgium, the 2002 law on euthanasia was initially confined to adults. But this was extended in 2014 to allow euthanasia for children with no lower age limit. Euthanasia is now used more broadly than in its early years. It is now applied to people with the first symptoms of chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s, patients suffering from depression, and older people suffering a combination of complaints.4 Euthanasia has become embedded in end of-life care in Belgium and is increasingly seen as a viable option. Reported euthanasia cases have trebled in ten years from 1087 in 2013 to 3,423 in 2023.5
Canada only legalised euthanasia in 2016 but has already scrapped the requirement for a person to be terminally ill and extended it to those with mental illness. A court determined that the restriction to the terminally ill was ‘incompatible’ with Canadian human rights and equality laws.6 That this happened so quickly after the original legislation shows how soon ‘safeguards’ can be eroded once the principle is abandoned.
Lawson cites the Canadian law professor, Yhan Yi Zhu, who wrote an article for The Spectator entitled “Why is Canada euthanising the poor?” Referring to the article, Lawson states,
It only took five years for the proverbial slope to come into view, when the Canadian Parliament enacted Bill C-7, a sweeping euthanasia law which repealed the condition where death was ‘reasonably foreseeable’ and the requirement that the condition should be ‘terminal”. Anyone with an illness or disability “which cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable” was now eligible for “medical assistance in dying (MAID)”.7
Lawson writes about the consequences of this change:
Canadians with disabilities who couldn’t get the care they needed in a health system under enormous strain (sounds familiar?) were encouraged to take the easy way out. Last year Canadian television reported that a 51-year-old Ontario woman known as Sophie was euthanised, although it turned out her suffering was not just from a chronic condition but despair that “her meagre disability stipend left her little to live on”. The CTV News station showed a recording of her saying: “The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless and a pain in the ass”.7
Assisted suicide has been legal in Oregon since 1997 for adults deemed to be terminally ill and not expected to live for more than six months. Recently, patients with treatable conditions like arthritis, anorexia and even hernias received “euthanasia”.8 in 2023, 357 people died under the law, over five times more than a decade earlier.9
The slippery slope is inevitable and the above examples show how ineffective ‘safeguards’ are. The only safeguard that works is total prohibition. No wonder many people with disabilities or terminal conditions do not want the law to be changed in this country!
Doctors’ experiences
Opposition to assisted suicide among doctors is highest for those who are most involved in end-of care. When the British Medical association polled its members in 2020, the majority of those working in palliative care or geriatric medicine were opposed to a change in law.10
A special note of warning for all elderly people reliant on the NHS and who do not want their lives terminated: Bringing in an assisted suicide law will prevent specialist palliative care being prioritised. Dr Juliet Spiller, a consultant in palliative medicine, said: “There’s no question that an assisted dying law would very negatively impact wider access to palliative care. The idea that you can focus on providing access to assisted suicide and palliative care is misguided. You can’t do both.”11 The case of Sophie from Ontario, above, illustrates the point.
It is a myth that assisted dying is needed to avoid dying in pain. Dr Carol L Davis, lead consultant in palliative medicine at University Hospital Southampton, and Baroness Finlay of Llandarff, a professor of palliative medicine at Cardiff School of Medicine, state “With modern analgesia, pain is much easier to control than once it was.”12
Simon Calderwell spoke with Professor Mark Glaser, the former head of cancer services for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He asked the professor about Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. The Bill would permit doctor-assisted suicide for patients deemed to have a year or less to live. The professor contended that it rested on a flawed premise because no doctor, ‘however famous’, can predict a patient’s time of death until it is almost imminent. Professor Glaser stated, “I can recall several patients who came to me- some as first opinions- with reports that indicated a prognosis of months and they are still being cared for by myself 10 years, 12 years, 15 years or 20 years later. To indicate that there is a given cut- off for a given disease is completely and utterly wrong.”13
Professor Glaser was asked to treat the Labour MP Dr Mo Mowlam after she was diagnosed with a brain tumour in the winter of 1996, and he cared for her during her time as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and through the Good Friday Agreement of 1999, right up to her death in 2005.
Professor Glaser said:
Mo Mowlam didn’t live the 6 months, the 12 months, or the 15 months which her prognosis and the scientific literature would have said about her case. She lived for 8 years, and following her exit from politics she had a very productive and useful life.
Most of my colleagues and in effect myself thought that she had months to live. That’s what the literature taught me, that’s what science had taught me, this is what my teaching in radiation therapy and a drug that I was working on had taught me. But I realised that she was optimistic and she wanted to go on. She said to me, “Mark, will I suffer by the treatment? Will I suffer by the radiotherapy? Will I suffer by the chemotherapy? Will I be agitated? Will I be nauseated? Will I be in pain?” She asked me all these questions, but I was able to be more confident in the fact that all these symptoms could be managed. I answered in a very quick way, without even thinking: “I will control the nausea, I will control the pain, I will control the side effects apart from loss of hair. You will feel well in your job.”
Everything that Dr Mowlam at the time exhibited we were able to get over to such an extent that she was able to play such an immense role leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. This says so much that the symptoms of a disease can be managed – pain, agitation, depression, not being mobile- everything can be alleviated.13
The professor commented on the claims by activists that a third of patients died in pain; he disagreed: “This sends shudders through my whole being because we have so many agents to relieve pain.”
Lives not worth living?
We see from this example that people with serious illness are at their most vulnerable and emotional. They need a clear, firm law to protect them in their darkest moments. Instead the ‘right to die’ brigade want doctors and others to help people kill themselves. It is the ultimate in hopelessness. If we see someone contemplating jumping to their death, we do not offer them a push. And if such a Bill went through, it would then compromise the relationship of trust with one’s doctor. Would the doctor really be working for your best interests?
In January 2021, Lord Sumption controversially suggested that some lives are less valuable than others. Thankfully, there were strong objections to this idea. The value of a human life is not based on perceptions of someone’s autonomy, contribution or capacity. Once we start ranking the value of people’s lives in this way, we breach a fundamental principle which protects everyone: that all lives are of equal value. Conceding this principle will have far-reaching consequences for our society. The law must not affirm the idea that some lives are not worth living. It sends the terrible message to suffering and vulnerable people – who are made in God’s image and worthy of respect – that they have a duty to die – people who realise their care is expensive and who feel they are a burden.
Abortion
The outcome of the 1967 Abortion Act provides a sinister analogy. It was originally sold to the public as a compassionate means of easing the suffering of a few hard cases, but since then about ten million babies have been aborted, 99% for social reasons. Now the same is being said about Assisted Suicide. How many ‘assisted deaths’ will there be until the ‘problem’ of the ‘ageing population’ is ‘solved’ and now that Sir Keir Starmer had admitted that the National Health Service is ‘broken’? The choice to die very quickly becomes the duty to die. The approach is hopelessness personified.
This terrible outlook is part of the naturalistic/evolutionary view of life that has spawned Nazism, eugenics and abortion. A cheap view of life. But the Judaeo-Christian view is not only right but accords a much higher value to human life. Its approach through the hospice movement to help alleviate pain while the person still lives is morally right. The other road sends a message to our society at large that murder – even self-murder is acceptable and life is cheap – not just in worth, but also pragmatically, that saving money is more important than caring for the lives of vulnerable human beings.
The value of life
What value do we place on an individual human life? If human beings are descended from a common ancestor that has given rise to apes and us, and we are part of the animal kingdom, then the value of life is merely what we choose to make it. The argument is then made that we put animals ‘out of their misery’ so why not do that for fellow human beings? This view has become so widespread some say that I as a confessing Christian have no right to ‘force’ my religious views on those who do not share them.
However, science has shown that apes and human beings are clearly distinct. Dr Vij Sodera FRCS (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons) in his magisterial book One Small Speck to Man. The Evolution Myth writes:
Few people fully realise that to accept that we are modified apes requires us to accept an even more fantastic series of propositions. Look at a particle of dust on the table in front of you. Is it possible for such a particle, being composed of simple molecules and after existing for a few billion years, to join with other simple particles and to acquire consciousness? – to ultimately peer down on another dust particle and to contemplate its origins? Yet inherent in evolution is the idea that spontaneously, without the action of any outside influence whatsoever, simple molecules dissolved in water became living cells, some of which became fishes, some of which became amphibians, some of which became reptiles. Some reptiles became birds and mammals. Some mammals became monkeys, some of which became apes, some of which became you and me… However, to question is the foundation stone of all science: and, from diverse aspects of animal biology, this book shows that, beyond all doubt, evolution from non-living chemicals to human beings cannot happen and did not happen. So our great, great…great grandfather was not an ape.14
And yet the truths of the Christian Faith remain the same: Men and women are made distinct from the animals. They are made in the image of God: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen.1:26a, 27). Man and the animals have a separate ancestry. That we are made in God’s image indicates we are similar to God in that we share God’s communicable attributes such as reason, love, will, discernment, morality and language.15 Apes are not made in the image of God as we are.
Since men and women are made in God’s image they are highly valuable and deserve special protection from being killed:
And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind. (Genesis 9:5b-6)
The Bible clearly prohibits the killing of innocent people in the Ten Commandments, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13).
Dr Tom Goodfellow refers to three of Christ’s best-known parables from Luke 15, namely the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin and the Lost (Prodigal) Son. He writes that a key theme from these is “the high value placed on human beings”. He adds”
The Prodigal may have been an unworthy wastrel, but he was not worthless and there was a great welcome waiting for him on his return home. Even the self-righteous, priggish elder brother was valued. In our western society for centuries, it has been the Christian faith that celebrates the value of a single individual, and we abandon this at our peril.16
Goodfellow then goes on to contrast this high view of human beings with the ‘naked ape’ view of humanity which “despite best intentions, may very quickly lose sight of any meaning or value of the individual, and this path leads ultimately in only one direction, which is Auschwitz, where unwanted humans are regarded only as garbage to be disposed of”.16
Goodfellow’s comments remind me of C S Lewis’ observation “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before … all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature…each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”17
True compassion for those who are terminally ill means valuing their lives, giving them hope and supporting high quality palliative care for all who need it. Therefore please reject this dangerous and immoral Bill.
Yours sincerely
Reverend David Barnes
1 Regionale Toetsingscommissie Euthanasie: Jaarverslag 2023, April 2024, page 16; Regional euthanasia review committees: Annual Report 2013, September 2014, page 9
2Regionale Toetsingscommissie Euthanasie: Jaarverslag 2023, April 2024, page 16
3 NL Times, 8th November 2023
4 NL Times, 8 November 2023
5 Federal commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia. Press release. Euthanasia- Figures for 2023, 27th February 2024. Commission Fédérale de Contrôle et d’Evaluation de l’Euthanasie, January 2015, page 7
6 ‘Eligibility for medical assistance in dying for persons suffering solely from mental illness extended to March 17, 2024, Government of Canada, 9 March 2023
7 Dominic Lawson, “The Euthanasia slippery slope is not a fiction”, The Sunday Times May 14th 2023
8 Oregon Death with Dignity Act: 2021 Data summary, Oregon Health Authority Public Health Division, February 2022, p14
9 Oregon Death with Dignity Act: 2023 Data summary, Oregon Health Authority Public Health Division, March 2024, page 3; Oregon Death with Dignity Act- 2013, Oregon Public Health Division
10 Kantar, BMA Survey on Physician-Assisted Dying, October 2020
11 The Mail on Sunday, 23 June 2024
12 The Times, 6 November 2020
13 “Assisted dying: Cancer specialists voice their fears” Simon Caldwell November 1, 2024. The Conservative Woman
14 “One Small Speck To Man. The Evolution Myth. 2nd Edition August 2009 (onesmallspeck.com) Dr Vij Sodera. Some studies have indicated that 95% of the genetic code is similar in apes and humans. it should be remembered that a small difference in the genome represents a huge difference in design. The human genome contains around three billion units of information, 5% of the genetic code represents about 150 million units of information. This is not a small genetic difference. Evolution posits that random genetic mistakes (mutations) gradually changed an ape-like creature into a human being. Sodera’s book details how this is not possible. Pages 356-413 analyse supposed ape-man transitions and conclude: “…the evidence points to populations of ancient human beings passing through some morphological changes (whether from inbreeding and/or disease) before gaining the modern human form … the fossil record contains only human and non-human bones, with no evidence for any intermediaries. Apes have always been apes and Man has always been man” Page 413.
Dr Donald Moeller DDS MD MA (Biology) writes of it: “A world class book, which has provided a new paradigm by which to view the evolutionary myth. It is very well written, easy to understand, very thorough, has great explanations.” Dr Jerry Bergman Ph.D Associate Professor of Biology writes “This outstanding encyclopaedic work deals purely with the scientific evidence. For detailed critique of evolutionary theory (especially anatomy and physiology of living and extinct animals), this book is an excellent investment.” As scientists discover more and more the wonders of the Creation on both a micro and macro level the old evolutionary ideology is clearly being seen for what it is- a fantasy. For wider critiques of Evolution online see the Answers in Genesis websitewhich includes a wider search of scientific journals on any given topic within the Evolution/Creation debate. Another useful website is Creation.com. For an excellent overview of all the key areas on DVD watch “Is Genesis History?” (This feature is also available at present on Amazon Prime.)
15 “The Genesis account” Jonathan D Safarti Ph.D, F.M). He adds: “We are not identical since we are creatures, so could never share God’s incommunicable attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience, and self-existence” Page 250
16 “Assisted dying Bill points way to the killing fields” Dr Tom Goodfellow November 10, 2024
17 “Mere Christianity” C.S Lewis. Book 3, Chapter 4, par.8