Now that the leader of the opposition, our prime minister in waiting, has given his support, and a national treasure has told her own personal story, the passing of new legislation to allow for assisted suicide is becoming almost inevitable. It will be yet another assault on our battered humanity. Of course, it will be dressed up in the caring, loving, emotion tugging language we have grown accustomed to, but whatever arguments are offered, however it is spun, it will be nothing less that state sanctioned killing.

It has always been this way. The powers that be, wait their time till bit by bit, drip by drip, nudge by nudge with the useful help of the arts, drama and the media community with personal sad stories, finally bring the reluctant reactionary population round to their way of thinking.  Ideas which only last Saturday were seen as quite ridiculous, bizarre, and belonging to the stage in comedy and farce, can be made to work, when a determined elite put their minds to it. There is something almost predictable about it. It was so with abortion on demand, same sex marriage and transgenderism.

With Euthanasia, the current step, is the call for a fresh debate. It is some years now since the UK parliament last debated the motion. That was back in 2015, when it was roundly defeated, but the mood has changed, we are told, and many are coming round to a more liberal and progressive view on this deeply controversial subject. There is a feeling that a fresh cohort of members of parliament, following a general election, would take a more enlightened view. For the moment, the call is simple. We need a fresh debate and who can be against that? Well, I can and I am. It is not something we should debate. The matter has been settled and it has been settled for thousands of years. The state has no authority to sanction killing other than in the very narrow parameters of administering justice or involvement in a just war.  It is the classic Judeo-Christian principle upon which so much of our civilisation is based.

Many will accept a debate and argue against any change to the law on the principle that it would be the slippery slope to all sorts of killing which would so easily seep through the net.  Safeguards, no matter how robust, have an uncanny albitite to be, in reality, quite weak. It will be easier to dispatch the elderly who feel they have become a burden, easier for young people who have become disillusioned with life to be assisted to end it and easier for people who can’t get affordable housing to find another way out.  All valid arguments, and based on solid evidence no doubt, but I am against it, simply because it is wrong.

Life is not something we invented. It is not a human construct. We did not choose when, where, how or to whom we were born. life is a gift. We didn’t make it, or craft it or purchase it. We owe everything to its creator and to try deny this, to usurp the maker’s authority by making ourselves gods, deciding when our life is completed is foolishness in the extreme. It is like the pot arguing with the potter, who made it. A picture that the prophet Isaiah so aptly used.  

It is a sad fact, a desperately sad fact that suicides are commonplace in our society and possibly most of us will have had a close encounter with one or more. It takes the breath away from you in the way nothing else does, because it strikes at the very core of our humanity, putting into question the very reason for our existence. It is impossible to conceive of the desperate pain that brings a person to this point and the pain that it delivers to those who loved them. Who can possibly be in a position to judge the rightness of any individual’s actions in these situations? That can only be a matter between them and their creator, but for the state to sanction the taking of life, it would fly in the face of all of this and cut at the very heart of our humanity.

Esther Rantzen’s daughter was right when she said that if her mother was to board a plane for Zurich, she would ground it.  It wouldn’t be up for discussion and that’s life.