Assisted Dying: Legislation

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, two quotations. John Donne:

“No man is an island”.

and the Book of Job:

“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away”.

Life is a gift. None of us decided to be born; we came from a relationship between two people, from a culture, from a context, from a spiritual hinterland, and any life is part of that flow. As it flows on, it seeks for more and more. Modern economics, and the market, encourage us to see ourselves as autonomous individuals. The noble Earl just talked about making an individual choice. None of us is an individual in that sense: we are part of a web of relationships, and that web holds us in suffering as well as in the imminence of death. T. S. Eliot said, “In our endings are our beginnings”.

I think we need to approach death by affirming life, being willing to face suffering and having a communal aspect with those around us. As Jesus said on the cross—his final decision, surrounded by others:

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”.

Death is not just about the end of a heartbeat in a physical body, it is about a transition within a life that flows into eternity. We must be very careful about isolating an individual, pulling them out of that stream and implying that they can survive on their own.