A TIME TO LIVE
The case against assisted suicide
By George Pitcher. Monarch. 160 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978-1-85424-987-6
This is a timely book. Having failed with their Bill in Scotland, the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society (now anomalously morphed into ‘Dignity in Dying’) will not relent in its efforts to legalise assisted suicide which will inevitably weaken the resistance to euthanasia, not least because, if the patient’s and relatives’ own efforts fail, it will be doctors who are called upon to administer the extra fatal dose needed to complete the job.
George Pitcher is well qualified to present his case. A well-known journalist, he writes exceedingly clearly and concisely. An ordained Anglican, he knows his Scriptures and is aware of the breadth of theological writing on this issue. In particular, Prof. Paul Badham — an Anglican theologian, who now supports assisted suicide, after seeing his father endure a slow agonising death — comes in for some unstinting, yet compassionate critique. Pitcher has the personal experience to do this as he wanted to hasten his own mother’s death when, in 1993, she was unconscious from a brain tumour.
