Rowan Williams and Assisted Suicide

The very useful blog "Get Religion" has a long post with interesting commentary and worth-while links relating to the decision by (what has in some quarters been presented as) the decision by the Archbishop of Canterbury to endorse assisted suicide.  According to "Canon Professor Robin Gill", one of Williams's chief advisors, "There is a very strong compassionate case for voluntary euthanasia . . . .  In certain cases, such as that which involved Diane Pretty [the woman who was terminally ill with motor neurone disease and who campaigned for the right to be helped to die], there is an overwhelming case for it."  Notwithstanding Gill's views, though, "a spokesman for the Church of England last night distanced it from Prof Gill's views. They did not reflect those of anyone else in the church, he said."  Indeed,

In a document he released in September with Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, Williams was clear:

It is deeply misguided to propose a law by which it would be legal for terminally ill people to be killed or assisted in suicide by those caring for them, even if there are safeguards to ensure it is only the terminally ill who would qualify. To take this step would fundamentally undermine the basis of law and medicine and undermine the duty of the state to care for vulnerable people. It would risk a gradual erosion of values in which over time the cold calculation of costs of caring properly for the ill and the old would loom large. As a result many who are ill or dying would feel a burden to others. The right to die would become the duty to die.

The Bill is unnecessary. When death is imminent or inevitable there is at present no legal or moral obligation to give medical treatment that is futile or burdensome. It is both moral and legal now for necessary pain relief to be given even if it is likely that death will be hastened as a result. But that is not murder or assisted suicide. What terminally ill people need is to be cared for, not to be killed. They need excellent palliative care including proper and effective regimes for pain relief. They need to be treated with the compassion and respect that this bill would put gravely at risk.

"Get Religion"'s point -- and it is a good one -- is this:  Shouldn't we worry that the ideological position (in favor of assisted suicide) held by many of those who write news stories about religion and religious people so affects their work that they get the story so wrong, on such an important matter?

Rick