Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the Bill and salute the courage of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, in introducing it. I do so with some trepidation, as an ambassador in bonds, because nearly all my Christian friends oppose it. I pray that they will forgive me. I say what I am about to say not to offend them but to contribute some perhaps fairly original thought to the debate. I should add, too, that I speak from a personal religious experience, which some of your Lordships may have noticed was unfortunately sensationalised in the national press just after we rose for last summer’s Recess. It is that experience which leads me to query two threads that run through all the many letters against the Bill that I have received from the Christian community—threads which can also be detected in the heartfelt speeches of the many noble Lords who oppose the Bill. The first thread is what seems to me to be an exaggerated fear of death. I find it perplexing that our humanists, who presumably do not believe much in an afterlife, should support this Bill, whereas my Christian friends, who trust that death leads to the salvation of the soul and eternal bliss, should oppose the death proposed by the Bill. I should have thought that the humanists would be more likely to hang on to life like grim death rather than the Christians, but it appears to be the other way round. I am aware of the commandment: ““Thou shalt not kill””, but it is generally accepted by Christians to mean: ““Thou shalt not murder””. Murder will not result from the Bill. The second thread which seems to run through the Christian position is an assumption that suicide is a religious crime. I may be wrong but I am not aware of anything in the Gospels validating that assumption. It is true that the Church has made suicide into a crime, supported often by the state. But there are several areas where the Church appears to have distorted the burning purity of our Lord’s teaching, and I suggest that this may be one of them. Be that as it may, are we really saying that all the thoroughly decent Christian doctors over the years who knew and loved their patients well, and who relieved them from the hopelessness of a painful terminal illness, will have been punished by our just and loving God? Do any of us really believe that? Not many I would suggest. Why should they continue to be punished by our terrestrial law? Perhaps even more irritatingly for my Christian friends, I suggest that our Lord does not appear to have gone out of his way to preserve his own earthly life—quite the reverse. All four gospels show that he did not need to go to Gethsemane or to surrender his humanity upon the cross. Let us not forget that in his great agony, he cried out those terrible, fearful words:"““My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?””." It would seem that for a few moments at least, even the Son of Man may have lost confidence in where he was going. Then came his glorious resurrection which gives so many people their certainty in the life to come. I can but recommend that certainty to my Christian friends, and ask them to ponder these matters in their hearts before they vote against the Second Reading of this compassionate and reasonable Bill.