There is perhaps nothing more 2020s than taking a sensitive, morally fraught issue loaded with complexity and nuance, and casting it as progress and kindness versus indifference and obdurate conservatism. When even senior members of the clergy fall into this trap, it is a sign of just how much social media has collapsed public discourse into a simple question of right or wrong.
The debate about assisted dying has become depressingly reductionist, but I was still taken aback when the former archbishop of Canterbury George Carey last week chose to mirror its flaws rather than adopt a more careful tone. He urged bishops in the House of Lords to back Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill to legalise assisted dying because it is “necessary, compassionate and principled”, saying: “The sad history of scientific exploration… is that church leaders have often shamefully resisted change. Let’s not follow that trend.” He implied that bishops had a duty to reflect the “vast majority” of Anglicans who support legalisation.
These comments epitomise so much of what’s wrong with the debate. First, like many of the strongest proponents of legalising assisted dying, Carey fails to acknowledge there are ethical concerns on both sides of the debate. Of course we should feel moved by appeals from individuals with painful health conditions likely to be terminal and who want to be prescribed lethal drugs to end their own lives.
But, as I’ve written before, there are good reasons to believe that the safeguards that have been proposed to date – the need for a terminal diagnosis where someone might reasonably be expected to have less than six to........