Doctor-Assisted Suicide May Soon Be Legal in Britain

Currently, any doctor in Britain who assists a patient to die prematurely could spend up to 14 years in prison (The Catholic Herald, December 2, 2024). However, two physicians and a judge may soon be able to give legal approval for an assisted suicide in the United Kingdom. This is concerning in a nation overseen by a national health care system that can benefit financially by prematurely terminating the lives of the very ill. The UK may soon join the club of nations where doctors can legally kill their patients. Currently, the bill requires consent from the patient and specifies narrow conditions, though the history of assisted suicide in other nations has demonstrated that the slope from explicit consent to vaguer, more sinister conditions is very slippery.

Not all leaders in Britain support this move. The Bishop of Portsmouth recently observed, “Our world here in the UK has now changed, unfortunately not for the better…. This legislation, however, makes one thing crystal clear. Britain is no longer a Christian country. To be a Christian in [the] future will not be easy, if ever it was.” The former leader of the Liberal Democrats has also observed, “A society has chosen a dystopian and contagious path if it chooses to facilitate the death of those who have a terminal illness rather than standing with them, weeping with them, valuing them and loving them against the desolation that any of us would feel if we were given a diagnosis of that sort.”

At the heart of the debate over doctor-assisted suicide is the idea that we all have the right to do to our own bodies whatever we want. However, the Bible clearly teaches differently, noting that the body is the temple of God’s own Spirit and “you are not your own” (1 Corinthians 6:19) and that human beings are created in God’s own image (Genesis 1:26–27) and their lives are sacred. God, the giver of human life, is the only authority that can sanction the termination of that life (Genesis 9:6–7). For a deeper understanding of this important subject, watch “Do We Have the Right to Die?”