Taking the easy way out?

With the U.K. Parliament now firmly in Labour hands, the progressive government is pressing forward with plans for a new vote on the legalization of assisted suicide. Since Parliament last debated the issue (and decisively rejected legalization) in 2015, several other Western countries have embraced some form of euthanasia, with grim results. In most cases, what was sold as a strictly controlled practice with very strict criteria, intended only for terminally ill and grievously suffering patients, has begun to broaden into a blank check for anyone tired of living or deemed unworthy of life. In Canada, MAID (medical assistance in dying) deaths grew thirteenfold in just six years after legalization, to comprise 4% of all deaths nationwide.

Despite such cautionary tales, support for euthanasia continues to grow. Most frequently, the practice is justified as a compassionate antidote to the intolerable suffering that accompanies some deaths, and indeed, no one can be unmoved by such suffering. The timing is odd, however—why is it that support for assisted dying has ballooned in exactly the same era and in the same places that medicine has succeeded most in mitigating end-of-life suffering? Two centuries ago, no one could expect to have their passing eased by morphine, and yet assisted suicide was almost unthinkable in the West. What has changed? At least four trends have contributed to this cultural transformation.

First, a series of changes in biotechnology and bioethics have encouraged us to blur the boundary between “begetting” and “making” human life. With the advent of easy contraception, we began to think of the creation of a new human child as fundamentally a matter of choice, and if a matter of choice, a matter of technique. Human will, aided by scientific know-how, could be employed either to “make” a baby (via artificial insemination by donor, in vitro fertilization, or perhaps even cloning) or to stop one being made (by contraception and chemical or surgical abortion). That which we have the power to make, however, logically, we must have the power to unmake. If human life is a miraculous gift of divine power, it is outside our control. If it is the routine product of our own techniques, we can do with it what we want—ending it or encouraging others to do so when it is no longer wanted.

Second, and relatedly, we have elevated “choice” to a self-justifying idol. “Life is precious. But so is choice,” wrote one British member of Parliament in support of the bill. Choice is more precious, though, she went on to argue. But the use of choice to destroy one’s own existence is self-contradiction. This mindset follows, however, from decades of rhetoric on autonomy that has become endemic in our culture: “My body, my choice” used to be the motto of abortion-rights activists until it was adopted by conservatives opposing vaccinations as well. Choice is a God-given good, but only as a means toward the pursuit of higher goods, not as an end in itself.

Third, technology has conditioned us to look for the easy way out. Even as medicine has helped to dramatically reduce the suffering of illness, it has also discouraged us from learning how to bear suffering well. Even as transportation and communications technologies have vastly reduced waiting times, they have deprived us of ever learning the virtue of patience—the suffering of bearing time. Online, we have been conditioned to escape unwanted relationships and conversations with the mere click of a “block” or “mute” button, or intolerable meetings by switching tabs. As a culture accustomed to instant gratification and painless escape steadily ages, the pressure for an easy exit from life itself will only grow.

Fourth, the only thing that can make death bearable is the presence of others—of supportive friends, family, and a pastor or priest around the deathbed. But it is just this that has become steadily less common. Most deaths now take place in hospitals or hospices, not at home, and often with only a doctor or nurse present. Today, more and more people die alone because more and more people live alone. Family bonds have been attenuated, and close friendships have become increasingly uncommon. As technology multiplies our “connections” with others, it weakens and dilutes each bond. The colleague you meet a couple of times a month on Zoom is much less likely to visit your bedside than the one you worked next to day after day. A common theme in patients seeking medically assisted suicide is loneliness and isolation.

Even as the body count of wrongful deaths piles up, popular pressure for euthanasia is only likely to increase in coming years, and it is not hard to see why. All the assumptions and values of our society point in that direction. If Christians are to have a chance of holding the line in looming legislative battles, they will have to fundamentally challenge the culture of convenience, choice, and self-creation that has made the campaign for self-destruction so plausible today.