Assisted dying and abortion: a repaganizing culture of death?

 

 

The third week of June was a remarkable one in British public life. The House of Commons voted both to progress the Assisted Dying Bill and to de-criminalise a mother taking the life of her unborn child at any point. The old and the young are not safe in modern Britain.

 

I don’t want to cause any pointless offence. You may be completely uninterested in what I have to say about these matters and if so I invite you to enjoy the summer sunshine. These are highly sensitive matters and it is not pleasant to think about them. I said something about assisted dying on a previous occasion. The abortion numbers in the UK are such that whether we know it or not, this issue almost certainly touches us, our family and friends. I don’t want what I say here to seem horribly blamey and judgemental. And I completely understand if you don’t want to read it at all or if you strongly disagree with it. Perhaps these things are easy for me to say. I am not a 15-year-old drug addict who has been raped by her pimp. I confess these are privileged armchair keyboard warrior opinions that have not been fully tested in the grit of real life. Nevertheless, if you do want to read on…

 

Personally I think that from the point of conception we should behave as if we are relating to a human life. We should treat all human life as sacred with absolute dignity. There is no other safe and objective standard. All human life must count as worthy even if it seems inconsequential or unbearable from some points of view. Human beings are in the Image of God and we owe them the love which is proper to our neighbour. The weakest and most vulnerable have a special call on our care.

 

Certainly when an unborn child might be viable outside the womb, I cannot see how its termination can be justified. The proposed situation of decriminalisation will be absurd. A mother alone will be able to sanction the ending of her child’s life with no legal consequences at, say, 11am, before birth, but if she were to murder her baby at 12pm, after the birth has taken place, she would face a mandatory life sentence. In what universe is this sensible or coherent or good for society? I cannot see that it is good for the mother. And certainly it is not good for babies an hour before they are delivered.

 

You might say this situation will probably never occur. We shall see. But in any case our laws and the operation of our legal system ought to have a measure of logic about them. And they ought to send a message that we love life and human beings. We will never allow the convenience or the wishes of the relatively “strong” to trump the life of the weak, even in theory or in principle.

 

Taken together, the changes to the UK position at the beginning and end of life look like an embracing of a culture of power and death.

 

I am praying for repentance and good sense and righteous laws which are enlightened by centuries of reflection on our Biblical Christian inheritance which made the West great.

 

These proposed moves are a regression to the pre-Christian pagan norm where infanticide and suicide were common. Jesus taught us to love the little children and our elders. The Emperors held them to be disposable.

 

If our culture does embrace folly and death, Christians have a wonderful opportunity to love life. To have children and to care for them. To offer adoption and fostering. To sit with the old and dying and pray for them and care for them.  To take in parents and grandparents if need be or to run care homes which really care and feel like a fitting home from which to be called Home.

 

May God have mercy on us and our society.