Polly's pop at a "pitiless God" distorts my argument

There’s more than one argument for opposing assisted dying.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A hand rest gently on another outstretched hand.

Alexander Grey on Unsplash.

I hesitate to have a pop at the venerable Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, partly because I like and admire her work. And partly, in this new media environment in which my enemy’s friend is my troll, I fear aligning myself with foam-flecked righties who use words like “Guardianista” and “wokerati”.

But she wrote a column late last week about assisted suicide that was just plain wrong. And, actually, I think she’s being profoundly illiberal on the subject, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.

Assisted suicide – voluntary euthanasia, assisted dying, call it what you will – was a hobby horse of mine some 15 years ago when I wrote a book against it. Slightly more recently, Toynbee and I were on a broadcast interview together on an entirely unrelated subject when, to the bemusement of the presenter, she suddenly raised assisted dying to have a go at me. It was quite flattering.

Anyway, last week’s Toynbee column was of a kind, dismissing the anti-euthanasia case as the province of religious nutcases (presumably like me). Consider this massive straw man of a sentence: “Only God can decide how long we should suffer before death comes at a time of his pitiless whim, they say.”

I’m used to this, though not from Toynbee. Debating assisted suicide, it’s only a matter of minutes before someone will say that I shouldn’t impose my “sanctity of life” beliefs on other people. Eh? I’ve never used that phrase in this context (whatever it may mean). In fact, my views on assisted suicide are entirely secular, though informed by a faith that respects the primacy of compassion for and defence of the most vulnerable in our society.

I believe that a jurisdiction that enshrines in its legislature the principle that some lives are more worth living than others takes us into very dangerous moral territory. Related to that, a two-tier structure for the value of human life in the medical professions is abhorrent. That’s why I say that to despatch the weakest and most vulnerable among us is unacceptably illiberal.

The terminally ill, the disabled, the profoundly depressed and the aged and vulnerable really shouldn’t be treated as a nuisance to be helped on their way.

A bill will come back to parliament to change the law to allow assisted suicide this autumn. With new PM Keir Starmer in favour and a very different configuration of the House of Commons post-election, its chances of passing are said to be high.

But even Lord Falconer, the parliamentary poster-boy for assisted suicide, who convened a ludicrous “independent” commission in 2012 stuffed with euthanasia enthusiasts and useful idiots, has accepted that no so-called safeguards can entirely ensure that no lives will be lost to malfeasance or malpractice.

So, my question to Falconer and Toynbee is this: How many unnecessary lives lost to assisted suicide is enough to have what you want? 100? 50? One? Another number?

It’s commonplace for deeply distressing accounts of agonising deaths to be rehearsed in support of assisted suicide. Toynbee did so last week. But as Falconer must (or should) know, hard cases make bad law. The only focus here should be on how best to ensure that no one need die a bad death.

For Falconer and his supporters the solution is to legislate so that terminally ill patients can be helped to kill themselves. But speaking to end-of-life medical professionals, such as Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, many of whom claim that advances now mean that bad deaths are vanishingly few, it’s clear that the UK’s world-leading palliative care has in sight the day when no one need die a bad death.

That’s no comfort to someone who is suffering at the end of their life right now. But assisted suicide puts that palliative care target in jeopardy, when it makes death a form of medical treatment. Look at the record – the Netherlands now allows assisted suicide for those who are simply “tired of life”. That’s not where end-of-life care should go.

The burden of proof under the Suicide Act (1961) lies with the defendant, who currently faces a maximum jail sentence of 14 years for assisting or encouraging a suicide. Those who have demonstrated that they have acted with compassion and consent have in turn been treated with compassion and leniency in the application of the law. Invert that burden of proof, with the Crown needing to prove that an unscrupulous relative or friend coerced a victim into suicide, and we’re into a fresh hell of moral jeopardy.

The law works as it stands. The terminally ill, the disabled, the profoundly depressed and the aged and vulnerable really shouldn’t be treated as a nuisance to be helped on their way. Again, as we might expect Toynbee to know, that is wholly illiberal.

It looks like the assisted suicide lobby will get what they want this year. It will be hailed as a great liberal social reform. Doubtless they will find it in their hearts to forgive me if I continue to demur.

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Economics

Sustainability

26 November 2024

4 min read

Black Friday: don’t shop, try stewarding instead

We're so fallible to consumer culture. Here's how to counter it.

Rosie Phillips

Rosie studies theology in Oxford and is currently training to be a vicar.

A phone screen is held up, showing a shopping page, behind a window displays a Black Friday Sale banner.

CardMapr.nl on Unsplash.

Have you noticed how many times in the last 24 hours you’ve been targeted or tempted by a Black Friday marketing campaign?

It’s estimated that we can see anywhere from 50 to 400 adverts per day - on TV, billboards, online, and, more than ever, through social media. I’ve never felt more seen and known by the Instagram algorithm, and many of us have experienced items popping up on our feeds which we were talking about with friends only hours before. Is it possible to resist such incessant and elaborate marketing schemes?

In the lead up to Black Friday this year, I’ve been looking out for a new vacuum cleaner (the rock-and-roll life of a thirty-something year-old). Having done all the research, I’m now poised to cash in on the discounts, regularly refreshing my Argos and Amazon tabs for the latest prices.

But, as I’ve been comparing the relative pros and cons of cordless versus cylinder vacuums (and marvelling at the development of anti-hair wrap technology), it’s been difficult not to have my interest piqued by various other products being put under my nose by these websites, too.

And difficult not to feel like, if I don’t act quickly, I’m going to miss out on an offer that’ll not come around again. It’s almost as if these marketing executives know how my brain is going work - even before I go online. But are we humans really as transparent as that?

Netflix’s new documentary, Buy Now? The Shopping Conspiracy, says that we are. It profiles several ex-insiders from the world’s biggest brands, who expose the manipulative tricks used by these corporations to make us buy more, and the extent to which our desire for endless consumption has been cultivated and capitalised on by design.

It seems that we humans, evolved and intelligent as we like to believe ourselves, are still fallible to serve the things which were designed to serve us. And the consequences are far-reaching. Online shopping may have dehumanised the consumer experience, but we remain connected to people around the world by global supply chains, and it is individuals and communities whose livelihoods are most dependent on the availability and quality of natural resources, and who live closest to the land, who reap the harmful effects of our incessant buying habits.

Hazardous e-waste, for example (including discarded laptops, phones, and TVs), is rising by millions of tonnes annually. The UK is a particularly bad offender for illegally exporting toxic e-waste around the world, dumping it in landfills where it releases toxic substances such as mercury, zinc, and lead into local water and soil supplies.

Back here in the UK, we can feel like such small cogs in such a huge, capitalist machine, that a lot of this seems beyond the realms of our human agency.

There is certainly value in being savvy with our spending power as consumers. In doing the research to get the best Black Friday deals, as we tighten the purse strings and navigate what has become a protracted and painful cost of living crisis for many. It can be hard for Christmas not to feel like an unavoidably expensive time of year.

But, perhaps there is also an opportunity to take small, subversive acts of resistance against this dehumanising consumer culture. Actions which reclaim our humanity and human agency, and which recognise our global interconnectedness.

For example, maybe you could resist the urge to impulse buy something this weekend, by stepping away from the screen to make a cup of tea or go for a walk outside, before clicking ‘Pay Now’.

Perhaps we could get better at comparing companies’ supply chains and ethical brand ratings, using our spending power to support those which align best with our values.

And, when we’re making a purchase, let’s take a moment to be grateful for the things we already have, the items we’re buying, and the people who made them.

The Christian faith invites us to reframe how we see our money and belongings through the lens of stewardship. It’s an underrated principle in today’s context. Stewardship goes beyond just thinking about how we spend our income, to the inherent responsibility we have as humans to look after the world around us, recognising that the earth’s resources are not ones we are entitled to, but are gifts which sustain life.

The principle of stewardship makes it impossible to hide behind a screen and to ignore the impact which our spending decisions have on people and communities around the world, however far removed from our lives they seem. It invites us to use our money and resources to invest in things which will serve us - and others - well, and tells the world that it matters that we challenge systems which perpetuate economic and environmental injustice.

And, if I happen to miss out on that vacuum cleaner while I’m out for a walk this weekend, at least it’s less than a month until the Boxing Day sales hit our screens.