Euthanasia - The Slippery Slope

The Private Members Bill for Assisted Dying has just been passed. There will be plenty of debate and possible amendments to come, but in all likelihood, this will now pass into law.

In 1967, a Private Members Bill to legalise abortion was passed. The main concerns at that time related to stopping backstreet abortions and saving women's lives. That's how it started. Today there are 224,675 abortions every year in this country (2020 figures), with the majority of them being choice led rather than involving a life saved.

Inevitably, however high minded and principled the assisted dying legislation is, it will only be a matter of time before the frail and elderly are being culled. Supporters of the legislation will challenge me on my words, but they should look at the facts.

The Netherlands was the first nation to introduce euthanasia with an officially tolerated euthanasia practice from 1985 and with full legislation from 2001. When it first came into force, the numbers choosing to die in this way, in line with the legislation, were small. Today the figures have more than tripled so that one in twenty deaths - approximately 5% of all deaths in the Netherlands - are carried out by way of assisted suicide. As recorded by charity Aliance Vita, ‘since 2001, [the Netherlands] interpretation has become increasingly permissive.’

Our nation has been built on Judaeo-Christian principles, but today's decision is yet another step away from that.

In my lifetime, I am unlikely to see the full outworking of this new legislation, the full extent of a downward slope towards killing our frail, our disabled and our elderly. I pray that for the sake of the generations to come, something will shift, something will change and that the horror emanating from today's decision will not happen.

My prayer is for a revival of the Christian faith in our nation, for a return to the values of the sanctity of human life, and for an understanding that we cannot and should not play at being ‘God’.