Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill is now finely balanced on a knife edge. After weeks of shambolic proceedings in the Committee stage, Ms Leadbeater says she is ‘positive’ it will pass. Meanwhile, there are signs that opposition to the bill is growing in Parliament. A group of Labour MPs have denounced the bill as ‘irredeemably flawed and not fit to become law’, and have urged their Parliamentary colleagues to vote against it.
As we wait for the next vote in the House of Commons, Fr Hugh MacKenzie, a hospice chaplain, remains deeply concerned about the impact of this bill on his ministry to dying people, should a majority of MPs, once again, vote in its favour.
A value to each life
‘One negative effect of passing this bill will be the introduction into the psyche of the hospice team the idea that there’s an option to give up on the life of a patient,’ he says. ‘ At the moment there is an assumption across the multidisciplinary team, of which I am a member, that we are here to foster the life, body and soul, of the patient. There is a value to each life, right up to natural death. This is the basis of the Hippocratic oath, and is still present to some degree in the Christian and even the post-Christian world. The assisted suicide bill is anti-hope.’
Fr Hugh divides his time between his duties as a priest at Westminster Cathedral and St John’s Hospice in north London. He goes to the 18-bed hospice every other day to minister to people of all religions, agnostics and atheists who find themselves there.
‘At the moment,’ says Fr Hugh, ‘people whose pain is under control may still ask: “Can’t you just sedate me?” This comes from depression. We can’t do that, and we are always aiming to help such patients to rediscover their importance and move out of that state of mind. If the bill goes through, it will be legitimate for someone to say “my life is not worth living” and for us effectively to say, “yes you are right.”’
A bill of despair
Legalising assisted suicide will mean crossing a fundamental line. ‘It’s a bill of despair’, says Fr Hugh. ‘It is understandable that a person suffering at the end of life might experience some despair, but it’s that lack of hope that makes suffering appear unbearable, and gives death its bitter sting, he says. ‘Assisting patients to kill themselves at the end of life is to treat human beings in a manner that is not true to who they are. It undermines what it is to be human.’
‘St John’s is part of the NHS hospice network,’ says Fr Hugh. ‘We get people of all religions and atheists as well.’ Fr Hugh and his assistant Sr Anne go to them all. ‘We have a lot in the Catholic toolbox for dying people. The Catholic Church is unique in the emphasis it puts on the end of life. If a Catholic priest is needed to minister to a dying person, he will immediately drop whatever he is doing to go to that person.’
In recent years Fr Hugh has noticed an increase in the number of people coming into the hospice stating that they have no religion at all. Yet, as Fr Hugh chats to them, some are open to discerning the power of love and prayer through suffering, and often to acknowledge a good higher power.
Spiritual matters
In his 12 years’ experience Fr Hugh finds that during the first conversation he has with patients, usually death is not mentioned and the talk doesn’t touch on religion. By about the third visit spiritual matters come up.
As people get nearer to death, they often want to make up with distanced family and friends and repair damaged relationships. ‘That seems to me to touch on what real love is’, says Fr Hugh. Lapsed Catholics may come back to the faith and receive the last rites. ‘There are prayers and blessings, the sacraments and the sacramentals,’ says Fr Hugh. ‘There really is so much in the Catholic toolbox.’
If the Terminally Ill (Adults) End of Life bill passes its next stage, there is now the possibility that there will be a four year wait until it is implemented. Some predict that this will be the end of the bill. But what could be the impact of such an interval of waiting for assisted dying potentially to come into force?
Fear of suffering
‘This will foster a fear of suffering,’ says Fr Hugh. ‘It will be a permission to make avoidance of suffering the highest value. It will decrease courage. It will decrease acceptance of higher values than pain and death. It is an attempt to take control of the last enemy of our man-centred materialistic culture: physical suffering.’
What does Fr Hugh say to those who say: ‘There’s no point to my life or my suffering’? In answer Fr Hugh says he and Sr Anne give sympathy, but more importantly they are in solidarity with the mental and physical suffering of the person. Christ on the cross is the example. ‘Most humans in difficult situations realise that love – willing the good of the other – and prayer are especially pure when suffering, and have a profound power. Such purity opens us to God.’
On those occasions when everything appears negative to patients, empathising can often lead to appreciation of the positive things that happen. ‘I might even point out that if they weren’t in the hospice I would never have met them! I tell them the ways in which they have inspired me. Together we can recall and give thanks for their waking up in a sick bed to find family or friends holding their hands, or offering words of reconciliation or gratitude. These expressions of love are what really matter.’
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