Euthanasia

Key Idea: God gives life and so only God can decide when life ends

Euthanasia is arranging for a person who is dying from an agonising incurable disease to die as quickly and as painlessly as possible. We are all afraid of a long and lingering death with all the pain that that may include. We would all like to die peacefully in our sleep from old age. However this does not always happen and we must face up to the fact that we, or one of our family may be in the position of facing a painful death. Some people think that we should have the right to make our own choices about when we die, and we should be able to die with dignity.

It is illegal in the UK for a doctor to deliberately give a patient a dose of medicine that will kill them. They must be careful that they control the pain without killing the patient. There has been much debate recently about this (Doctor Death), and some countries have made it legal for a person to ask to be "killed" by their doctor (Holland and Australia). The voluntary Euthanasia society was formed in 1935 to campaign for a person's right to seek an "easy" death. In 1985 a poll showed that 72% of the population agreed that a person should have the right to ask for their own death.

"I sincerely believe that those who come after us will wonder why on earth we kept a human being alive against his (sic) will., when all the dignity, beauty and meaning of life had vanished; when any gain to anyone was clearly impossible and when we should have been punished by the state if we had kept an animal in similar conditions"

Dr. Leslie Weatherhead (leader of the Methodist church)

There are things to consider if we made Euthanasia legal;

• Would this give the doctors too much power and responsibility?
• Would sick people be pressurised by relatives?
• Would it lead to involuntary euthanasia for the old or handicapped?
• Is it not our duty to care for those in our society who are ill?
• Isn't life always precious no matter what sort of life it is?
• Can we really tell when it is hopeless as new cures are being discovered all the time?
• It is difficult to change your mind;
• Could voluntary euthanasia help those who have lost their mental faculties? or are senile?

Most Christians would argue that since life is given by God it is only God who has the right to take life away. However many Christians would argue that since it is possible for modern medicine to keep a person artificially alive there should be the possibility to "turn the machines off" if a person is clinically or brain dead. Euthanasia questions the role that the elderly, infirm and handicapped have in our society. Because the care of the elderly is an important part of this, is euthanasia helping people to "die with dignity"?

Some Christians who disagree with euthanasia but support the idea of dying with dignity have been involved with the setting up of the Hospice movement (cf section on Hospice). Many of the Hospices have a Christian foundation (One of the first Helen House is in the grounds of a convent in Oxford) Dame Cicely Saunders founded the first modern hospice in London in 1967. (St Christopher's hospice, Sydenham, Beckenham, KENT)

All Christians also believe in life after death and so would not consider death as the end of life but as a stage on the road. This idea could be applied to both sides of the argumen