“If there’s a change in the law to allow assisted suicide, we’ll be crossing a line”, says Father Andrew Bishop, the priest in charge at Croydon Minster in the London Borough of Croydon. He feels strongly that a change in the law would be a statement that human life is expendable and that some lives are not worth living. “This will affect us all”, he says. “I think of the words of John Donne: ‘Any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.’”

“Not accepting assisted suicide is somehow taken to mean that you are not caring”, says Father Andrew. “People assume that caring for the dying is always about the alleviation of pain. Assisted suicide risks reducing care for the dying to only that.  This view impoverishes our status as human beings.”

Isolation

Ordained into the Church of England in 1996, Father Andrew has seen people becoming increasingly isolated over the years of his ministry. “People still want to be part of a community, and yet at the same time they want to be more and more individual”, says Father Andrew. “The language of autonomy around assisted dying undermines our solidarity with others. We don’t decide when we are born and when we die should not be our personal decision. My fear is that because frail people will be put under pressure to choose to end their own life, that choice could become a heavy burden, isolating them when they most need to be understood.”

An aging population combined with fragmented families will also lead to problems in Father Andrew’s view. “In families involving multiple sets of children, where does the decision-making around assisted suicide really lie? Who gets listened to? Amid the potential tension and disharmony among loosely connected family members, the dying person could get caught in the middle.”

Distinction with animals 

Father Andrew, who is married with four children, grew up in a household where his father was a vet and his mother a geriatric nurse. “I was definitely aware of the distinction between caring for animals and caring for humans. Humans share some creaturely aspects with animals and I saw the sympathetic way in which my father put down cats and dogs. I also knew that the loving care my mother gave her patients was different.”

Slippery slope

There is no doubt in Father Andrew’s mind that legalising assisted suicide will put us at the top of a slippery slope. “It will be a slope and it will be slippery”, he says. “How long will it be before assisted suicide becomes normalised? Could we see a time when, as has happened with abortion, assisted suicide moves away from doctors and into the hands of organisations who will send pills through the post for people to kill themselves?”

Another pressing question is how safe will safeguards actually be in an assisted suicide law. “Doctors have difficulty controlling the use of antibiotics. The pressure on doctors to approve requests for assisted suicide could be intolerable. Soldiers come back from war traumatised by participating in the act of killing. We need to wonder what this will do to members of the medical profession.”

An unhappy legacy

Ministering to families who have lost someone to suicide is part of a priest’s role. “Suicide is complex.  And it’s always an appalling shock for families when a tragedy like this happens”, says Father Andrew. “There are also the unanswered questions that remain with the family. Assisted suicide is planned and expected, but there could be an unhappy legacy of doubt and misgivings among those who encouraged and supported the dying person to take his or her own life. Ultimately there is still the reality of what the act of suicide actually is.”

The church must up its game on promoting good end-of-life care and demystifying death, according to Father Andrew. “The church needs to speak more confidently about the end of life. I see funerals becoming more secularised, reduced to a celebration of life. The focus of commending the person to God as one of His children is lost. Death is not a defeat. The Easter celebration tells us that victory over death has been won.

“Assisted suicide may appear to be a loving option. But the truly loving way is to accompany the dying person to the natural end of life, even if it’s hard.”