Apparently, Britain decided assisted suicide was the easiest answer to a hard problem. Recently, the British Parliament advanced a bill that brings physician-assisted suicide (PAS) one step closer to law. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill passed its second reading by a vote of 330 to 275, allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to patients they deem terminally ill and within six months of death. Of course, advocates of this bill promise tight safeguards, limited eligibility, and lots of compassion. Don’t buy it.
As Albert Mohler Jr., writing for World Magazine, puts it, “If you declare a so-called ‘right to die,’ then you simultaneously (if evasively) argue for a duty to die.” Once the law treats death as a “solution,” it stops being optional. That duty to die creeps in through subtle pressures—from family guilt to healthcare costs—until vulnerable people see themselves as burdens.
The Myth of Safeguards
We don’t need to wonder how this ends. Canada already offers a front-row seat to the consequences. Remember Christine Gauthier, the Paralympian and veteran who asked Canada’s Veterans Affairs office for help installing a wheelchair lift? Instead of offering support, they offered to help her die. The message is clear: why help you live when it’s so much cheaper to end your life?
It’s not an isolated incident. Canada’s euthanasia program, which started with promises of tight safeguards, now allows children and people with mental illness to access assisted suicide. Once the bureaucracy decides some lives aren’t worth living, there’s no stopping its expansion.
In 2015, Aaron Kheriaty, the associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Medical Ethics Program at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine, warned that legalizing assisted suicide can create a dangerous cultural shift, where society views death as a solution. In Oregon, where assisted suicide was first legalized in the U.S., he noted the sharp rise in overall suicide rates, which is 35 percent higher than the national average. Kheriaty explained that this normalization of suicide undermines public solidarity and sends a harmful message: some lives are no longer worth living. He warned that, “To abandon suicidal individuals in the midst of a crisis—under the guise of respecting their autonomy—is socially irresponsible: It undermines sound medical ethics and erodes social solidarity.”
The Erosion of Limits
Dr. Gordon Macdonald of Care Not Killing points out that the safeguards in euthanasia laws are never more than window dressing.
“Others highlighted the problems with the so-called safeguards, which evidence from around the world shows over time are eroded and swept away, just as we see in Canada, which introduced a tightly defined law in 2016,” Macdonald explained.” By 2019, the law had been expanded from terminally ill adult to anyone suffering, and this year legislators approved euthanasia for those with mental health problems. While some warned that those from ethnic minorities, poorer back grounds or with a disability were much more likely to have their lives ended if this law was passed.”
In the Netherlands, physician assisted suicide has expanded far beyond terminal illness to include conditions like anorexia, depression, and even blindness. In some places, fear of euthanasia has grown so much that seniors now carry “anti-euthanasia cards” to declare they want to live—just in case a doctor makes the decision for them.
Does anyone really believe that Britain won’t head down the same path?
The Economics of Death
Here’s why: euthanasia isn’t simply a moral issue—it’s an economic one. Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is already overburdened. How long before offering “a way out” becomes the path of least resistance? As Andrew T. Walker warns, “If the continuation of life is no longer a basic moral good… the state safeguarding life gives way to a perverse incentive structure to end life.”
Compassion isn’t what’s driving this push. Budget pressures are. It’s simply about the bottom line.
When Christianity Leaves the Culture
Moreover, this debate isn’t just about legislation—it’s about Britain’s soul. As Mohler states:
Britain is effectively a post-Christian society. Its breathtaking cathedrals and abbeys are a testament to a now-foreclosed culture based on a Biblical understanding of human life. Only a very small fraction of British residents attends church services.
These cathedrals are now tourist attractions in a country rapidly shedding its Christian roots. The sanctity of life has been replaced by a secular worldview where death is just another “choice.” But that choice is framed in a way that preys on the weak, the elderly, the poor, and the disabled. Once death becomes an option, it quickly turns into an expectation for the weak and powerless. This expectation not only devalues their lives but also robs them of the purpose that can be found even in suffering.
Here’s what the ‘Culture of Death’ refuses to acknowledge: suffering has a purpose. Andrew Walker reminds us that suffering can be redemptive. Andrew writes:
I have never heard a Christian suffer who has testified to pointlessness in their suffering. In a way we cannot comprehend, suffering draws us nearer to our Lord, a Lord acquainted with suffering himself (Isa. 53:3).
Contrast that with the hollow promises of assisted suicide. Mohler warns of the social and political pressure it creates, transforming death into a duty.
From this point onward, a British citizen who fits the covered category of a patient dying of a terminal disease under a certain timetable will face a choice no patient should have to make: Do I continue to use up crucial medical services and the resources of both family and society when there is now a legal way out?
Is America Next?
This isn’t just a British problem. Ten U.S. states and Washington, D.C., have already legalized physician-assisted suicide. The same script is playing out here, with promises of safeguards and compassion masking the deeper agenda.
We can’t let it happen. When life becomes a commodity measured by convenience or cost, no one is safe. As Mohler says, “The move to legalize ‘assisted death’ can succeed only when certain moral absolutes are undermined, and those moral absolutes rest on explicitly Christian foundations.”
Mohler and Walker are both clear: the Church must be the voice of truth in a culture that is losing its way. We need to proclaim boldly that every human life, whether in the womb or in their final days, is sacred because we are made in the image of God. That means standing up for the weak, the vulnerable, and the suffering.
CAP’s Year End
With December upon us, we invite you to prayerfully consider making a year-end, tax-deductible contribution to Center for Arizona Policy. As your champion for Life, Marriage and Family, and Religious Freedom, you can be assured that we will continue to stand for you and your family in 2024 and beyond! You can contribute by clicking here. Thank you!
ICYMI
- Read here about the financial influence behind the assisted suicide bill.
- Read here about Planned Parenthood’s record-high abortion numbers as other healthcare services decline.
- Read here about the Supreme Court’s decision not to intervene in challenges to gender identity plans in schools.
- Read here about oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti and what they mean for state bans on harmful gender treatments.