The Culture of Death scores in Britain

Once again, the Culture of Death scored big last week as the British Parliament voted 330 to 275 to forward a bill that will legalize “assisted death” in England and Wales. The legislative move sets the stage for negotiations over the final form of the bill and the velocity of Britain’s slide into the list of nations that encourage and enable their citizens to end their own lives.

Those who voted for the bill will surely protest my statement that they will encourage “assisted death,” but that is exactly what they are doing. If you declare a so-called “right to die,” then you simultaneously (if evasively) argue for a duty to die. Prominent spokespersons for people who are severely handicapped and terminally ill fully understood this and said so. From this point onward, a British citizen who fits the covered category of a patient dying of a terminal disease under a certain timetable will face a choice no patient should have to make: Do I continue to use up crucial medical services and the resources of both family and society when there is now a legal way out?

That’s the way the Culture of Death advances. It promises a perverted vision of personal autonomy but actually delivers a society in which so-called “assisted death” is redefined as a medical advance. All this would perhaps not be so obvious until you recognize that Britain’s cherished National Health Service is collapsing under the weight of massive cost increases and a decrepit delivery system. Quite convenient for “assisted death” to arrive as a cost-saving device sold as compassion.

The vote on Friday came as action on a “private members’ bill” offered by a Labour Party member of Parliament, Kim Leadbeater. This means that the governing Labour Party leadership did not propose the bill and both major parties declared the issue a free vote so that members could vote by conscience. Few of these private bills ever reach the floor for a vote, but Leadbeater’s bill advanced in record time—just a matter of days. A similar measure had failed back in 2015. Sadly, its time had come.

How did this happen? The move to legalize “assisted death” can succeed only when certain moral absolutes are undermined, and those moral absolutes rest on explicitly Christian foundations. The most crucial of these foundations is the knowledge that life is a precious gift granted by the Creator, who alone holds the power to give and take life. A society that honors this foundational truth could not contemplate the subversion of human life and human dignity by assisted suicide. A society that denies this essential truth will eventually rationalize anything, given time and motivation.

Britain is effectively a post-Christian society. Its breathtaking cathedrals and abbeys are a testament to a now-foreclosed culture based on a Biblical understanding of human life. Only a very small fraction of British residents attend church services. Of course, Britain has an established church, but the Church of England’s glory days are long past. On this issue, indeed on most issues, it represents either theological accommodation or historic antiquarianism. Lord Carey, a former archbishop of Canterbury, made his own position in favor of the bill quite clear. He lamented that “church leaders have often shamefully resisted change,” even as he called for others to support the Leadbeater bill “because it is necessary, compassionate and principled.” It should be noted that the current archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, along with a good number of Christian leaders, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, did bravely oppose the bill.

The point is that the majority in Parliament self-consciously discarded two millennia of Christian moral teaching and inserted an exuberant vision of human autonomy in its place. Christian moral teaching affirms with energy and compassion the use of palliative medicine to reduce pain and suffering, and medical authorities charged with palliative care note that such care has often been withdrawn in contexts where patients have been offered the “right” to die.

The second humiliating collapse was seen among figures in the Conservative Party, which by all rights should forfeit its name. Former Conservative Prime Ministers David Cameron and Rishi Sunak both came out in favor of the bill. They represent the move of that party to adopt social liberalism and attempt to combine it with some form of fiscal conservatism. It is a fatal combination that simply cannot stand, and the two former Tory prime ministers are positive proof of what social liberalism truly becomes—a Culture of Death.

Leadbeater and her allies promised, of course, that sufficient safeguards would be put into place, but no one should believe this for a minute. The “right to assisted death” may start with application only to mature adults with certifiably terminal diagnoses, but a quick look across the English Channel at nations like the Netherlands, where the slippery slide now allows for children to end their own lives—with medical assistance. Or Britain’s political class could have looked across the Atlantic to Canada, where assisted suicide now ranks in the top five causes of death.

The Culture of Death scored big in Britain, and its deadly logic is almost certain to spread. This is a horrifying rejection of the Christian conscience and Biblical truth. Then again, that is exactly what you must expect from a post-Christian culture. A secular morality simply cannot sustain an ethic of life.