The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that changing the law on assisted dying would put the most vulnerable at risk.
In a significant intervention, the Most Reverend Justin Welby urges anybody with reservations to lobby their MPs to vote against highly contentious reforms to the law.
It comes as an historic Private Member’s Bill is introduced to the House of Commons on Wednesday, with MPs to debate and vote on allowing assisted dying for the first time in a decade.
Writing in the Daily Mail, the Church of England’s most senior bishop said ‘the pressure to end one’s life early would be intense and inescapable’ if the law is reformed.
And, while recognising that the proposed Bill comes ‘from a position of compassion’, Dr Welby warned that ‘we can never be sure that assisted suicide will be safe from abuse’.
Recalling the fears of his late mother that she had become a burden before she passed away last year, the archbishop said that ‘the right to end your life could all too easily – all too accidentally – turn into a duty to do so’.
He added: ‘I worry that even the best intentions can lead to unintended consequences, and that the desire to help our neighbour could, unintentionally, open the door to yet more pain and suffering for those we are trying to help.’
The assisted dying debate returns to Parliament as Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Private Member’s Bill is formally introduced in the House of Commons.
A debate on it next month will mark the first time MPs have voted on the topic for almost a decade.
Dr Welby has previously spoken against assisted dying, including in 2015, but his intervention before the Bill’s first reading is significant because he is often seen as a progressive voice in the Church.
The UK’s most senior Roman Catholic last week called on churchgoers to urge their MPs to vote against the proposed bill on assisted dying.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols warned Catholics that it ‘risks bringing about for all medical professionals a slow change from a duty to care to a duty to kill’.
The last time there was a binding vote on changing the law, in 2015, proposed reforms were defeated at the second reading by 330 votes to 118.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised a free vote on the issue this time, meaning MPs can vote with their conscience, rather than along party lines.
In 2023, when he was leader of the Opposition, he said he believed there were ‘grounds for changing the law’, having voted in favour of legalising it in 2015. Polls show that almost two thirds of the public are now in favour of change.
Campaign group Dignity in Dying, which backs reform, says that assisted dying allows a person with a terminal condition to control their own death if their suffering becomes unbearable.
But Care Not Killing argues that it would put pressure on the vulnerable to end their lives because they fear being a burden.
The disabled, elderly, sick or depressed, they argue, would be put especially at risk.
Earlier this year Dame Esther Rantzen, diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, revealed that she had signed up to the assisted dying clinic Dignitas in Switzerland.
She too urged people to make their feelings known to their MPs.
‘Explain this is a life and death issue and all we are asking is the right to choose, not to shorten our lives, but to shorten our deaths,’ she said.
JUSTIN WELBY: I don’t want the people I love – or anyone – to choose to die because they feel they’re a burden
Last year my mum died of cancer, at the great age of 93. A few weeks before, she said to me: ‘I must be such a burden. Wouldn’t it be better if I just went?’
I told her: ‘Mum, we love you, every day with you is a gift; you are NOT a burden. And we are thanking you for all you give us.’
I’m sure I’m not the only one to have had this conversation, and to worry what such thoughts would mean if assisted suicide became an option in Britain.
Though our society might be divided over the question of assisted suicide, we all want the same thing for those who are suffering: dignity and compassion.
Compassion for those with chronic illness or in deep distress – and dignity for our loved ones and ourselves.
As a clergyman, I’ve been at the bedside of parishioners in their final months and days, whether in hospitals, hospices or at home, for 30 years. To see them in pain is truly heartbreaking.
I know that a desire to help is what is behind Kim Leadbeater MP’s proposed law to legalise assisted suicide – it comes from a position of compassion.
But I can’t help but worry.
I worry that even the best intentions can lead to unintended consequences, and that the desire to help our neighbour could open the door to yet more pain and suffering for those we are trying to help.
No matter how many safeguards we put in place, we can never be sure that assisted suicide will be safe from abuse.
We know, for example, that older people are often mistreated in our society. According to the charity Hourglass, which works to protect the elderly, some 2.7million UK citizens over 65 are thought to have been abused – physically, emotionally, financially or sexually. We cannot pretend that some people’s decisions around dying would be unaffected by this.
The same is true for other vulnerable people: those with disabilities, those with mental health issues, those in coercive and controlling relationships.
But even where there is no abuse, the pressure to end one’s life early could be intense and inescapable if the law were changed.
The legalisation of assisted suicide may introduce structural incentives to our health system – incentives that could have disastrous consequences. In these circumstances, the right to end your life could all too easily – and accidentally – turn into a duty to do so.
We have to recognise that people who are dying, people just like my mum, often feel like a burden on their family, on their friends, on the NHS.
In Oregon, where assisted suicide was legalised in 1997, almost half of people who opt for such a death say that the fear of being a burden is a factor in their decision.
Changing the law would not simply provide a choice to end one’s life for those that want it – the choice to either end your life, or live on, would be forced on everyone.
I don’t want the people I love – or anyone, for that matter – to be made to feel a burden in their final months on earth.
Dying in pain is not inevitable. Good palliative care can provide us with the dignity and compassion we are all searching for.
My mum’s last days were eased by advice and medication from a hospice.
She died peacefully, heavily sedated and deeply loved. That, to me, is dignity in dying.
In raising the matter of assisted suicide, we are asking the right question but arriving at the wrong answer.
Instead of trying to change the law in a way that will not, cannot, be safe for the vulnerable, we should be campaigning for the Government to fund palliative and hospice care properly, so that everyone is treated with dignity and compassion right to the end of their life.
The Bible tells us that our society is judged by how we care for the vulnerable – the orphan, the widow, the stranger.
The issue of assisted suicide will ultimately be decided in a free vote in Parliament. MPs will vote based not only on their conscience, but in response to the views of their constituents.
If you, like me, have reservations about this issue, contact your MP. Many of them will be undecided.
Once the law is changed, I fear there will be no going back.