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.
Trends in society
The book has five main pithy chapters, the sixth being a summary. First he deals with the trends in society — especially the rise of human rights and autonomy and the decline in belief in a Creator who makes us in his image. The second chapter is a disturbing and thoroughly referenced exposé of what is really going on in Oregon, Holland and Switzerland, which are so often cited as exemplars of excellence by those pressing for legalised euthanasia. The role of the law and medicine in assisted suicide comprise the next two chapters before a scriptural analysis completes the book.
The latter is a masterly example of clarity in writing for a secular readership about Christian understandings of not just assisted suicide but the broader issues of suffering, sickness and death, and I would have no hesitation in giving it to anyone, Christian or not, as a well-argued case as to why killing people is not a good thing even — and perhaps especially — when motivated by ‘compassion’.
Trevor Stammers,
Programme Director in Bioethics and Medical Law at St. Mary’s University College, London, and a member of Morden Baptist Church, Surrey
