What will stop the culture of death that libertarian Britain has embraced?

Now we’re allowed to end life with impunity

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Diane Abbott speaks in the assisted dying debate.

Dianne Abbott MP speaks in the assisted dying debate.

Just a few days apart, two debates recently took place in the House of Commons concerning life and death. In the first, MPs voted to decriminalise late-term abortions. In the second, they voted for assisted dying. Both times, the reach of death grew a little longer.

Imagine a mother about to have a baby who is suddenly having grave doubts about whether she can manage a new child as the moment draws near. It’s not hard to sympathise with many in this situation, but rather than recommend she goes through with the birth, and perhaps putting the baby up for adoption for childless parents desperate to adopt, we now have passed legislation that allows us to terminate the baby’s life instead. Proponents argued this was to relieve a small number of women who had been prosecuted for late-term abortions. The reality is, however, that it will probably become more common. In the debate, Jim Shannon MP pointed out that in New Zealand, in the first year after their parliament voted the same way, late-term abortions increased by 43 per cent.

A baby a week before and a week after birth are virtually identical. Yet as a result of this bill, it will not be a criminal act to end the life of the first, but it will be to do the same to the second. What’s the betting that the logic of this will stretch before long to allowing parents to terminate the lives of newborn babies with a new limit – say up to one month after birth? The arguments will be exactly the same – sympathy for distressed parents who suddenly realise they cannot cope with a new life on their hands, especially if the baby is discovered to be flawed in some way. When emotional sympathy, personal choice and the rights of the mother over the baby become the only moral arguments, the logic is inevitable.

Despite the argument shifting rapidly against the Terminally Ill Adults Bill – the vote passed by 314 votes to 291, with 32 MPs apparently having changed their minds - it now looks likely that this second bill will pass into law in a few years’ time, despite scrutiny in the Lords.

Here on Seen & Unseen, we have scrutinised the arguments put forward for assisted dying over past months. We have argued about the unintended consequences for the many of permitting assisted dying for the few. In The Times a while ago, I argued that if ‘dignity’ means autonomy — my ability to choose the place, the time and the manner in which I die — there is no logical reason why we should refuse that right to someone who, for whatever reason feels their life is no longer worth living, however trivial we may feel their problems to be. With this understanding of dignity as unlimited choice, the slippery slope is not just likely, it is philosophically inevitable.

In both cases the logic of the arguments used means the march of our ability to bring about death will not stop with these measures, despite their proponents’ assurances that safeguards are in place.

These two votes reminded me of something Pope John Paul II once wrote. In an encyclical, Evangelium Vitae – the Gospel of Life - he warned that “we are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between what he called a “culture of death” and a “culture of life”.

He warned that this “culture of death” would be “actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency.” It is, in effect, he argued, “a war of the powerful against the weak: a life which would require greater acceptance, love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in one way or another. A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or lifestyle of those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. In this way a kind of ‘conspiracy against life’ is unleashed.”

They were strong words, and in the UK at least, back in 1995, might have seemed alarmist. Yet I couldn't help thinking of them as these two bills passed through the UK’s national parliament. In both cases, the bills were introduced very rapidly with little time for serious moral deliberation. Both depended on emotional appeals to a small number of admittedly distressing cases without serious consideration for the wider cultural and philosophical ramifications of these seismic moves. Both encouraged the steady encroachment of death on demand.

What concerns me is what these bills say about the kind of culture we are becoming. MND sufferer Michael Wenham makes the point powerfully that this is all about autonomy and independence, a spurious kind of compassion, and the fact that palliative care is more expensive than subtly encouraging the dying to take their own life. Looking behind the arguments for compassion, it's not hard to spot the iron law of libertarian ideas of freedom, where individuals have absolute rights over their own lives and bodies that trump everything else. This is the kind of libertarian freedom that prizes personal autonomy above everything else and therefore sees our neighbours not so much as gifts to be valued and cherished, but limitations, or even threats to our precious personal freedoms.

Pope John Paul was right. It does seem that we are opting for a culture of death. And my fear is that it won’t stop here.

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Graham Tomlin
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Feminism

Leading

23 October 2024

5 min read

Can Kemi really have it all?

For female experiences to mean something, we need to be part of something bigger.

Sian Brookes

Sian Brookes is studying for a Doctorate at Aberdeen University. Her research focuses on developing a theological understanding of old age. She studied English and Theology at Cambridge University.

A woman works at a laptop on a desk surrounded by picture frame.

Kemi Badenoch campaigning.

Kemibadenoch.org.uk

Apparently Kemi Badenoch is unfit for leadership due to a ‘preoccupation’ with her children. Such comments are hardly a surprise. After all, she is both a mother and a woman vying to be in a position of power. Since the beginning of time women have been mothers, but women haven’t always been in positions of power. So it is not surprising that some people have problems adjusting to the change. But it isn’t just Robert Jenrick who finds this adjustment difficult. In my experience, most women find it hard too. Becoming a mother is a beautiful but body-breaking, exhaustion-inducing and identity-questioning process. And that is just in the first few months. Add to that the expectations of also having successful careers as well, and it is no wonder we find it hard.

Kemi Badenoch’s response, naturally and rightly, was to show how capable she is to lead the Tory party alongside her maternal responsibilities, whilst challenging the view that just because she is a woman she is more responsible for her kids than a man with similar age kids would be. But her lack of acknowledgement of the hardship involved in being a mother and having a successful career does leave an awkward silence around what is an ongoing imbalance in many relationships when it comes to holding the fair share of parental, household and professional responsibilities.

This relentless pursuit of the ability of mothers to do everything else as well as being a mother says something about what we expect from women in our society. We need to prove that it is possible to be a woman and do all the things men have traditionally done. Yet sometimes I do wonder if we make it harder for ourselves. Is it our own expectations which make this thing called being a woman much harder than it needs to be?

Perhaps she is valuable not because of what she does or the choices she makes and what that says about the feminist cause, but because her worth lies elsewhere.

I’ve been blessed with the task of raising three boys, but I think about my friends who are raising little girls and the hopes they have for them. The hopes that they will grow to defy the expectations placed on them because they are female; to counter the oppression put upon them by breaking through the ceilings that may be built over them by others, to become whatever they want to be; engineers, consultant doctors, CEOs, even builders or plumbers if they so desire.

At the same time, (if the girls want them), they are expected to build families and loving safe homes. All of the things our mothers hoped for us and their mothers before them hoped for their own daughters.

Yet now, alongside those hopes for domestic fulfilment, so many other expectations have been added. Of course, the obvious solution to this, as Kemi has argued, is for men and women to share the load on both sides – to build the home and work life in a way that benefits both in the partnership. But the fact remains that relatively speedily in the course of historical development, we have come to a position where we are all expecting to have it all, all the time. And especially for our girls – we want them to be strong, powerful, successful, fruitful and productive all at once.

Now, this is not to say that we should revert to a time when only women ran the household and only men inhabited the professional domain. But sometimes perhaps it’s OK for a woman just to be a mum, if that is what she wants. She doesn’t have to also show the world she can be everything else as well. Some would criticise that decision as selling out on the relentless need to fight for equality with men. But not everything a woman does has to demonstrate some ideological end in fighting for equality, as though that is what gives her value as a woman. Perhaps she is valuable not because of what she does or the choices she makes and what that says about the feminist cause, but because her worth lies elsewhere.

Whatever we do, we do it to witness to a love, a truth which goes beyond whatever we can give to the world.

Many of the friends I spoke of earlier who have those little girls chose to have their daughters baptised as babies. This act of infant baptism puts the stake in the ground for the belief that before they could do anything, before they could prove their worth as a female member of society demonstrating all that power, strength, purpose and ability to right all the wrongs of the past, they were loved and valued beyond measure, without condition.

As a girl, and before they grow to be a woman, maybe a mother, and then potentially the leader of a political party, they are a child of a God who values them not because of what they have done or will do, but because they are His child. At the same time, this doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing – it’s central to the Christian faith to fight injustice and overturn oppressive powers, but this is never achieved by human action alone as though the weight of the world falls on our shoulders, it is done by bearing witness to a God who has a better plan for the world and for society than we could ever dream or imagine. It is only when we realise this that the burden might be lifted from all the women fighting for all the things we are supposed to fight for.

Of my three closest friends in the church, one is (currently) a stay-at-home mum, one a doctor, one a vicar. As for myself, I am studying for a PhD in theology. We also all spend a lot of time looking after children, cooking and doing the dishes (as do our husbands). And yet, when we reflect together, these choices feel less statements of how we might be empowered or not as women, but more the result of a belief that whatever we do, we do it to witness to a love, a truth which goes beyond whatever we can give to the world. And so, we can each celebrate what we “do” because in each offering of ours can be found meaning, purpose and life beyond our own abilities, even our own individual actions. Perhaps, this is better than any kind of feminism you find around these days, because it allows us each to do the small thing in front of us without loading more on ourselves than we can bear alone. Only together, and only in knowing we are part of something bigger than ourselves, can our variety of female experiences mean something. In this way of living, being a woman feels very free indeed.