Supporters of assisted dying need to understand that they will almost certainly get more than they say they want. You’ll have to judge whether they are really as moderate as they claim, or whether they think – with good reason – that legalizing assisted death will allow them to expand their plan in ways that would now horrify many.
The campaign to legalize abortion on demand has, in my opinion, never been candid about its true goals. This also applies to the similar campaign for assisted dying.
The reform of abortion laws in 1967 was intended to push a minority of women, trapped by terrible conditions and a brutal, brutal law, into dangerous actions. In Britain the argument of safety was of paramount importance. This version is still current. The TV series Call The Midwife more than once contains vivid, emotional and one-sided storylines in which the pre-1967 law is depicted as unjustified, harsh, inflexible and even fatal.
In the 1960s it was claimed that between 50,000 and 250,000 women were at risk of botched illegal abortions each year. Such cases were tragic, but there is little hard evidence that these horrors occurred as often as claimed.
The TV series Call The Midwife more than once contains vivid, emotional and one-sided storylines in which the pre-1967 law is depicted as unjustified, harsh, inflexible and even fatal.
In April 1966 the British Medical Journal published a report from the Council of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. It argued based on known figures: ‘If 100,000 criminal (including self-induced) abortions are performed annually, this means that these are associated with a mortality rate of only 0.3 per 1,000. The risks of criminal abortion have been found to be high, so the known number of deaths suggests that the total number of such cases must be significantly lower than claimed.” The College also noted that ‘therapeutic’ abortions, based on pre-1967 law, were carried out in significant numbers in NHS hospitals – 2,800 in 1962. Many more took place in private clinics.
Now the number of legal abortions in England and Wales is almost 215,000 per year. They show no signs of abating despite (or perhaps because of) decades of sex education, the ready availability of contraceptives and the ‘morning-after pill’. Many abortions today are performed with little medical intervention, through the use of ‘pills by mail’. And this enormous action – which, in my opinion, destroys a human life – may very soon be freed from all further legal restrictions. A planned amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill, which has broad support among MPs, would abolish sections 58 and 59 of the Offenses Against the Person Act 1861 plus the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929. The result would be that ‘no criminal offense is committed by a woman acting in connection with her own pregnancy’.
Even some liberals think this goes too far. I think it’s a warning of how far assisted dying will go if we let it happen. Sir Keir Starmer promises what is called a free vote. That is, a situation in which MPs do not have to tell voters what they intend to do before they do it. But they are under enormous pressure from liberal conformism to support assisted dying.
There is another worrying aspect. Until recently, abortion advocates at least claimed to think that throwing away an unborn person was bad and should be unusual. Its American supporters, most notably Bill and Hillary Clinton, proclaimed in the 1990s that their goal was to make abortion “safe, legal… and rare.”
Interestingly, modern feminist abortion advocates reject any suggestion that abortion should be “rare.” Amelia Bonow, co-founder of the pro-abortion rights group Shout Your Abortion, has said: “I can’t think of a less compelling way to argue for something than to say it should be rare. And anyone who uses that term assumes abortion is a bad thing.” In 2012, the US Democratic Party removed the word “rare” from the abortion section of its official policy platform.
I suspect that in the case of abortion and assisted dying we are dealing with something much deeper than compassion for suffering. A new anti-religion, the belief that, above all, we must have control over our own bodies, has burst into the space created by the death of Christianity. You’ll hear it all the time when discussing any modern issue, from drug use and abortion to the transgender movement: “What right do you have to tell me what to do with my own body?”
But in many cases, those who hold this view are putting themselves at risk, through medications or invasive medical procedures that they may one day regret. The losers in almost all these cases are the immediate families of those involved. The law and society will no longer support them in their pleas.
This adds weight to the warnings of those who say assisted dying in this country will quickly copy Canada’s frightening system. In 2022, that country ended the lives of 13,200 people per year, 4.1 percent of annual deaths.
The unborn baby has a shortage of defenders when the case for abortion is made. He or she has no voice and is considered by many abortion advocates as not yet human. But how much of a voice will the chronically ill have if it becomes legal to eradicate them?
Many feel guilty about the burden they place on their loved ones. As a society, we are seriously failing to provide the palliative end-of-life care that would surely be the best response to the needless suffering that so many endure in their final months.
But I think it’s even worse than that. These changes are a retreat from Christian civilization to a brave new world where anyone who stands in the way becomes disposable.
We have dehumanized the unwanted unborn and are about to dehumanize the awkward old and sick. Who’s next?