Religious activists have too much say over our right to die

[LeftishBrit]

,,,It does seem a little unfair, for example, that while Lawson is discouraged from airing opinions that occasionally had to do with actual weather conditions, a religious campaigner such as Andrea Williams, a member of the General Synod and chief spokesperson for her own pressure group, Christian Concern, should continue to be accepted as a respectable pundit, specialism: 21st-century challenges to Old Testament regulations. Ms Williams's name will already be familiar to many gay rights campaigners courtesy of a memorable speech on same-sex relationships, in which she applauded Jamaica's criminalisation of what her sect considers a curable aberration, a diagnosis she did not hesitate to apply to Tom Daly.

Today, Williams is one of many religious activists fighting the option of assisted dying for the terminally ill, a measure gleefully extinguished by the bishop-infested House of Lords in 2006, now revived in Lord Falconer's bill , and supported by 82% of the population.

Last week, in an uncompromising editorial, the BMJ declared , having looked at the evidence, that Falconer's bill is safe, that it is humane and makes "robust allowance" for conscientious objection by dissenting doctors and palliative care obsessives, whose convictions should not trump the wishes of their patients: "It's the right thing to do and most people want it." This followed another important endorsement of assisted dying, by Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health. "Personally I would like that for myself if I was in this position," he said. "I would like to be able to call on a doctor to help me take this last step."

And Andrea Williams would like to stop him doing any such thing. "It's not a doctor's place to play God at the end of life," she said , when invited to comment. That's her job. Not forgetting the Anglican bishops, Catholic priests and like-minded ideologues who also see a chance to impose their religious values, in the face of death, on individuals who never shared them in life....


Otherwise, as debate on Falconer's bill intensifies, we can expect further misleading interventions by representatives of Living and Dying Well, and Care Not Killing, another predominantly religious coalition whose campaign director, Dr Peter Saunders, has explained that although his objection is based on sanctity of life: "To win the debate on assisted dying we need to be using arguments that will make sense to those who do not share our Christian beliefs."

His judgment was only confirmed by last week's news reports, following the BMJ editorial, in which balance required that the opposition, in the shape of Care Not Killing, be prominently quoted. "While the autonomy is important," he said, "it has to be balanced against other principles including public safety." In future, even those who do not share his Christian beliefs may feel a duty to dissuade Dr Saunders, and others like him, from contravening the spirit of the ninth commandment.


(More at link):
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/05/right-to-die-assisted-dying-keep-religion-out?CMP=twt_fd

[cbayer]

1. I'm going to agree with the premise here, but I just can't get through this article.

It suffers from a verbosity and tedious pedantic style that is not unique to British journalists, but is often used to caricature them.

[LeftishBrit]

4. Better than the other extreme - the sensationalist tabloid style which is in fact far more common

in British journalism.

[cbayer]

5. I will grant you that!

Fortunately, I usually find much of what I read to be in the middle.

[Jim__]

2. "The question of assisted dying needs to be discussed rationally." Agreed.

But, then, should we agree that people raising arguments against it have to disclose their "real reasons" for opposition:

If it is still possible, following the protracted contortions over gay marriage, to justify the efforts by a minority of religious agitators to control a non-observant majority, in this case by denying them suicide, then democratic transparency surely requires some openness about their affiliations. At a minimum, faith-based opponents of assisted dying should abandon as unworthy a deliberate scheme, exposed by Raymond Tallis, chair of healthcare professionals for assisted dying, to conceal "their real reasons behind arguments intended to instil fear of the consequences of legalisation".

It reminds me of a tactic that was often used against opponents of the Vietnam War. Someone would get up and cite a dozen reasons why the US should not be fighting the war. Then, an opponent would get up and "rebut" his points by calling him a communist. The arguments are valid or invalid on their own merits. They are not less valid because they were delivered by a communist.

Just based on reading the article, this seems to be a similar situation. People are raising secular concerns about assisted dying. Shouldn't these concerns be addressed without demanding to know all the affiliations of the people making them?

[LeftishBrit]

3. To clarify: it is not that people are being assumed to have religious reasons when they don't

It is that very explicitly religious-right people are getting involved, but talking as though they are just honestly concerned about the welfare of sick people.

Andrea Williams is the head of this organization:

www.christianconcern.com

As for Peter Saunders, here is what appears:

https://www.blogger.com/profile/17222354018504253042

and his blog:

http://pjsaunders.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/About%20this%20blog

Actually what bothers me most is not that these individuals have religious motives, but that they are for the most part quite explicitly linking this to an anti-abortion agenda.

The problem is not that they should need to disclose motives (which for the most part are obvious), but that the religious pro-life movement are trying to push religious rules into law - and this in a country where only a small minority even go to church regularly.