You are here
Bishop: you can give terminally ill a dignified death 'without killing them'
Friend of Lord Carey insists former Archbishop of Canterbury does not speak for most clerics on assisted dying
By John Bingham
THE TELEGRAPH
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/n
August 17, 2015
A prominent bishop has hit back at calls from the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey to legalise assisted dying, insisting it is possible to enable people to die with dignity "without killing them".
The Bishop of Bristol, the Rt Rev Mike Hill, emphasised that he is a friend of the former archbishop - who has long-standing links with Bristol, reflected in his full title of Lord Carey of Clifton - but said he did not speak for the rank and file of Church of England clergy.
Lord Carey and the Anglican Bishop of Buckingham, the Rt Rev Alan Wilson, were among a group of Christian and Jewish clerics who wrote to The Daily Telegraph at the weekend setting out a religious case in favour of assisted dying.
The group, which also included leading rabbis from the Liberal and Reform strands of Judaism and the first female leader of the Methodist Church, Baroness Richardson, said religious teachings about the value of pain should have no place in arguments about assisted dying.
"There is nothing sacred about suffering, nothing holy about agony, and individuals should not be obliged to endure it," they wrote.
Earlier Lord Carey, who stunned the Church of England last year by announcing he had changed his mind on the issue, argued that allowing assited dying would be "profoundly Christian and moral".
MPs are due to debate an Assisted Dying Bill tabled by the Labour backbencher Rob Marris next month.
The bill, which replicates proposals put before peers by Lord Falconer last year, would allow people thought to have no more than six months to live and a "settled intention" to end their life to be allowed be given a lethal dose of drugs on the authority of two doctors and a judge.
On Friday, Bob Cole, who was 68 and suffering from terminal cancer, recorded an impassioned plea to MPs to support the bill shortly before taking his own life at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. It came just 18 months after he watched his wife die the same place.
New figures published at the weekend show that the number of British people to have died at Dignitas is set to reach 300.
Bishop Hill insisted that the Church's position was not to argue that pain in itself was a good thing.
"We need more palliative care provision rather than handing out the right in law to take life," he argued in his blog.
He added: "The supporters of physician assisted suicide of course are very clear that this is a simple matter of individual choice - choice being the great god of a consumerised society.
"Except, of course the choice they present us with is extreme.
"It goes like this: you can either die a death in great pain and distress or you can support a change in the law which will allow a doctor to bring lethal drugs for self-administration, (where possible) which will kill you."
He said it was not for him to judge people travelled to Switzerland to end their lives and that such cases were tragic.
But he added: "The Church of England, with the exception of a high profile, now retired, archbishop (and friend) and without doubt some of our Church members and clergy, has been resolutely against a change in the law.
"Of course, this leaves those of us who don't want physician assisted suicide open to the criticism that we don't care about those in great distress in the hour of death.
"As a former hospice chaplain, I refute this. In fact the Christian church has a long and noble history of seeking to assist people to die well without killing them."
