An age that rejects God ends up killing its old
by Tim Stanley, Telegraph:
When we stop believing that life is sacred, we head down the utilitarian path to extinguishing the infirm.
Thank you, Matthew Parris! Since Esther Rantzen bravely went public with her stage four cancer, I’ve been invited onto several shows to put the case against assisted suicide – and, frankly, I’ve failed. The argument for relief from pain is so strong. The current proposal – that two doctors sign off a self-administered poison – is so limited that it seems hard to object.
But then Matthew endorses assisted dying with such enthusiasm, eloquence and boundless insanity that one’s doubts are confirmed. Yes, he wrote in a weekend essay, this will be the thin end of the wedge – but good! In a society where we’re having fewer babies, a smaller working population is being left to care for a feeble army of expensive old crocs. I make no apology for treating human beings as “units”, said Parris, or calling upon Britain to make a cold calculus of “input” vs “output”. For the sake of national self-preservation, we must drop the “taboo” around elderly suicide.
Yikes.
Reading between the lines, Parris implies that our moral code is already changing thanks, in part, to the weakening grip of Christianity. This is correct. Ours is a post-Christian society haunted by its historic ethics, including that punchy passage from Corinthians: “Your bodies are temples of the holy spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God.”
Read here (£)
Read also: We can’t afford a taboo on assisted dying by Matthew Parris, The Times
Yes, legalising assisted suicide would shift social attitudes. That is precisely why we must not. by Robert Buckland MP, Conservative Home
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