Standing on a precipice
Precious freedoms that people in England and Wales fought for during the Second World War are again in danger thanks to MPs’ prideful desire to play God.
In Iolanthe, Gilbert and Sullivan’s popular comic opera, the Lord Chancellor sanctimoniously sings, ‘The Law is the true embodiment of everything that’s excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw, and I, my Lords, embody the Law.’ But not everybody believes that everything that becomes law happens to be ‘excellent’.
In Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, when Mr Bumble learns that he bears legal responsibility for the actions of his wife, even though he has absolutely no control over her, he complains, ‘If the law supposes that… the law is a ass – a idiot.’
So not everything that makes its way into the statute book is, to quote Psalm 19:7-8, ‘perfect’, ‘refreshing’, ‘trustworthy’, ‘wise’ or ‘right’ – whether that’s in Nazi Germany, Communist China, contemporary Russia or North Korea.
With best intentions?
One example of this can be found in Nazi Germany, with the passing of the 1935 Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, and the Reich Citizenship Law of 1935. Both laws began the process that, following the outbreak of World War II, ended with the Holocaust – the destruction of six million Jewish people, along with countless other disenfranchised minority groups.
So, although there are laws that promote justice, protect the weak and defend the vulnerable, there are also laws that, even if potentially well-intentioned, can have bad effects, such as Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which a slim majority of parliamentarians – 314 in favour, 291 against – are now hoping will become law.
Though old age, illness and infirmity may eventually prevent us from doing the things we once did in our youth, we can nevertheless pray that, like Caleb in Joshua 14:11, our physical or spiritual vigour remains intact.
There may be economic, sociological or potentially humanitarian arguments about providing someone with assistance to end their own life, but our times are in God’s hands (Psalm 31:15) rather than our own, with the danger of a legalised ability to terminate life raising the sinister spectre of Nazi Germany.
In 1933, the German state’ s Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases prescribed compulsory sterilisation for people with incurable hereditary conditions, chronic alcoholism, and other forms of ‘social deviance’.
It was this, along with a letter written by Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, backdated to 1 September 1939, that extended the sterilisation programme to the killing of children and – later – adult patients, and formed the legal basis for the National Socialists’ so-called ‘mercy death’ programme.
Rather than issuing a formal ‘Führer’s decree’, Hitler’s 1939 note was a flagrant attempt at distancing the dictator from the letter’s deadly ramifications.
The original programme, aimed at children and, later, disabled adult patients – though officially discontinued in August 1941 due to Church opposition – nevertheless continued and, due to World War II, was covertly expanded to embrace ‘non-Aryans’. (As Hitler once pointed out, ‘Wartime is the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill.’)
Those considered to be ‘criminally insane’, ‘incurably sick’ or diagnosed with a range of ‘terminal neurological conditions’ were eventually deemed to be ‘lebensunwertes Leben’ (‘Life unworthy of life’), and therefore deserving of ‘Gnadentod’ (‘mercy death’).
A panel of medical experts then reviewed each case – usually without seeing the actual patient – to decide whether a ‘merciful death’ could be meted out.
The supposedly ‘merciful’ means, however, included the lethal injection of toxic chemicals, starvation, physical abuse and carbon monoxide poisoning. These were administered by paid and specially recruited National Socialists committed to ‘emptying beds’.
Later, teams of SS men wearing white coats to allay patients’ suspicions took part in the iniquitous process in the name of ‘racial hygiene’.
History warns us that just because something becomes law doesn’t have to mean that it, or its eventual developments, are truly lawful. As the apostles told the Sanhedrin, the Jewish legislative and judicial assembly, ‘We must obey God not man’ (Acts 5:29).
In the Old Testament, Isaiah warned against ‘those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness’ (Isaiah 5:20).
In the New Testament, Paul speaks of those who ‘do what ought not to be done [and] have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity… They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice… they invent ways of doing evil… [and have] no love, no mercy’ (Romans 1:28-31).
Carefully considering the consequences
Now, I’m not saying that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is an attempt to bring about the industrial scale killing of those who, nearing the end of their lives, are finding that life to be unendurable.
My concern is simply that, if the bill becomes law, a legal precedent will have been set. One that, like abortion and divorce, would no doubt be implemented in increasingly liberal ways.
The bill’s passing could also enable a future government to solve the not inconsiderable problems of a creaking NHS and an aging population whose increasing longevity sadly isn’t matched with a corresponding rise in physical, psychological or cognitive good health by terminating – or assisting in the termination – of the lives of the oldest, youngest or most vulnerable.
If a more authoritarian and unfeeling administration was to one day end up in charge, then the parameters allowing for ‘assisted dying’, ‘mercy killing’, ‘assisted suicide’, ‘legalised euthanasia’ – or whatever people end up calling it – might well be enlarged, extended and made increasingly easier and permissive.
Would such a government end up dictating who lives or dies, or enabling those whose calling instructs them to ‘do no harm’, to make such harmful decisions themselves, regardless – eventually – of the patient?
After all, although euthanasia and doctor assisted suicide are currently illegal under British law, death can still be legally hastened by doctors through the withholding or withdrawing of life-sustaining treatment. Am I being unnecessarily pessimistic? I don’t think so.
Who’d have thought that, following a conclusive vote in the House of Commons on 17 June 2025, that the 1967 Abortion Act would one day give rise to a situation where it’s possible, in the words of Alithea Williams of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), that ‘…a woman who aborts her baby at any point in pregnancy, even moments before birth, would not be committing a criminal offence’?
Hardening of hearts
Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?’ So crossing our fingers and hoping for the best should the bill eventually be passed simply won’t cut it.
Someone recently said they overheard a hardnosed funeral director who, allegedly criticising the increased longevity of his fellow humans, ruefully remarked, ‘People these days just aren’t dying up to other people’s expectations!’
It’s the kind of callous remark that 2 Timothy 3:2-4 warns us about when it says that, in the last days, ‘People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.’
Another, more personal example occurred when I was buying cough medicine from my local chemist. ‘I bet you must be selling loads of this stuff now everyone seems to be going down with the flu,’ I remarked.
‘No,’ groaned the cashier serving me, ‘I wish more people would go down with it so we can sell a lot more!’ It made me smile at the time, but the chemist wasn’t joking. What, I wonder, will happen if people like that are eventually responsible for allowing or facilitating someone’s death?
Who knows, were the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to become law in England and Wales, if doctors or nurses would one day transition from the role of professional healer to becoming a state sanctioned Harold Shipman – one legally entitled to take human life. (On 31 January 2000, Dr Harold Shipman, an English GP, was convicted of murdering 15 patients under his care. Having murdered about 250 mostly elderly patients, Shipman is regarded as one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history.)
Precariously on a cliff edge
In the past, only those on death row faced the guillotine, hangman’s noose, axe, firing squad, gas chamber or lethal injection. Now, however, in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand, although patients can self-administer the lethal medication, it can also be administered by a doctor or nurse intravenously. Not that they’d need to, of course! Having mentioned gas chambers earlier, it’s perfectly possible that there may be one coming to these shores, should the bill be passed in the House of Lords, and a human sized 3D-printed capsule made available.
The Sarco suicide pod, invented by Dr Philip Nitschke (aka ‘Dr Death’) is, according to a BBC report1, ‘flooded with nitrogen, reducing the oxygen levels rapidly. The process would make the person inside lose consciousness and die in approximately 10 minutes.’
What next? Cyanide capsules, gas chambers disguised as shower facilities, vans with carbon monoxide piped into the passenger compartment, mass shootings beside mass graves, or – as mentioned above – lethal injection?
It’s also worth considering if lives might in some instances end up being tragically terminated due to an administrative error or a bureaucratic bungle.
And finally, there’s the danger that, like Canada, which legalised assisted dying in 2016, although the Leadbeater Bill is currently aimed at the ‘terminally ill’, this might eventually be extended to those experiencing ‘unbearable suffering’ from an irreversible illness or disability, as well as to those with a mental illness.2
Today, we’re standing on a precipice, the cliff edge crumbling as we peer into the abyss. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, or who’ll eventually end up in the chasm? So today, more than ever before – Pray! 
1 Reported by Jane Wakefield, BBC Technology reporter 9 December 2021. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59577162
2 The latter is expected to be possible in Canada from March 2027.