Same-Sex Marriage – Brief Guide to the rights of churches and Christians under the new law

Now that the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013 has been passed by parliament it is vital that Christians are well informed about their rights and the limits of the law, and also that we speak the truth with grace and love.

The Evangelical Alliance (EA) has produced a set of FAQs for churches and individual Christians about the implications of the new law.

The Alliance stresses that the FAQs ‘represent advisory guidance and should not be regarded as legal advice’ and that ‘many aspects of the law relating to the redefinition of marriage are complex, fluid and open to interpretation’.

It adds that ‘government assumptions about the robustness of protections for third parties are likely to be challenged by case law’ meaning that the meaning of the law may evolve in practice as court cases are brought by aggrieved parties.

It also says that as the new legislation makes it illegal for the Church of England to conduct same-sex marriages, the guidance applies primarily to churches other than the Church of England.

The full guidance is available in pdf format on the EA website but I have listed the FAQs below and very briefly summarised the answers given. I would recommend that all pastors and Christians who think they may be affected should read the document in full.  

Church Questions

1. Which churches have agreed to perform same-sex weddings and which haven’t? Only the Quakers, the Unitarians, the Metropolitan Community Church and Liberal Judaism have formally opted in.

2. What if a same-sex couple approach my church and ask to use our building for their wedding? You can refuse.

3. What if it’s a shared building? You can still refuse.

4. What if a same-sex couple specifically ask my church or me as the minister to conduct a same-sex wedding? You can refuse even if your church has opted in.

5. What should we be putting in place as a church to protect ourselves against problems? Know the law and make your position clear in your governing document.

6. If the media ask us about our policy, how should we reply? Say that you abide by EA’s position and are not authorised to conduct same-sex marriages.

7. Could I be sued for preaching that marriage is only between one man and one woman? No.

8. I am an Anglican vicar. Do I have to marry everyone in my parish who requests a wedding? You have no duty to perform same-sex marriages.

9. I am an independent nonconformist minister. Do I have to perform same-sex marriages? No.

10. What happens if a church member wants to have their same-sex marriage in what has been their church since childhood? You can’t do it unless your church opts in.

11. Do we need to re-write our wedding service? No but you might like to make a clear declaration during the service of your position on marriage as being exclusively between a man and woman.

12. Local authorities use church facilities. Other churches make use of local authority facilities. How will such authorities respond when they hear of the churches’ position on same-sex marriage? They should be completely impartial.

13. Could our church be refused registration of our place of worship to conduct weddings because of our opposition to same-sex marriage? No.

14. Can we decide not to continue our registrar function? Yes but you need to think through the reasons carefully.

15. If we continue to exercise a registrar function is there anything we can do to dissociate our church from the new state view of marriage? See 11 above.

16. If we continue our registrar function could we be sued if we refuse to marry someone?Possibly but you are not breaking the law.

17. What if I am authorised to act as a registrar of marriages and I do not wish to conduct same-sex ceremonies, but my church has opted in to conduct them. Can I refuse? Yes.

18. Has adultery been removed as a ground for divorce? Only for same-sex couples.

19. Has non-consummation been removed as a ground for annulment? Only for same-sex couples.

20. Our church offers marriage guidance and counselling. Will we have to offer this service to same-sex couples? Churches won’t but commercial organisations will.

21. Do the existing kinship rules regarding the marriage of close relatives apply to same-sex marriages?Yes.

22. Will membership of the Evangelical Alliance provide our church with any protections? EA offers guidance and solidarity but not legal protection.

Questions for Christians

1. In public or at work, can I express the view that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman? Yes.

2. As a teacher can I refuse to teach about same-sex marriage? You must not misrepresent the law but are still entitled to express your own views. But be sensitive and professional.

3. As a civil registrar will I have to perform same-sex weddings? Yes.

4. Can I exempt my children from lessons that teach same-sex marriage as a norm? Yes.

5. Are faith schools exempted from teaching same-sex marriage as a norm? Yes but they must not misrepresent the law.

6. Will chaplains be protected? Yes but this might be challenged in court.

7. I am an organist who usually plays at wedding services at a church but do not wish to play at a same-sex wedding. Can I refuse? Yes.

8. I am a flower arranger who usually volunteers to decorate a church for wedding services but I do not wish to do so for a same-sex wedding. Can I refuse? Yes.

9. I am a commercial flower arranger but do not approve of same-sex marriage. Can I refuse to decorate the wedding venue? No.

10. I am a commercial photographer but do not approve of same-sex marriage. Can I refuse to photograph a wedding of a same-sex couple? No.

11. Will we be able to adopt or foster children if we believe that marriage is only between a man and a woman? Yes.

The explosive growth of the South Korean church had its origins in deep missionary sacrifice

In Yanghwajin Foreigners’ Cemetery in Seoul are 145 graves belonging to Christian missionaries and their families who dedicated their lives to Korea during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

These missionaries profoundly influenced Korean society, not only by establishing hospitals and schools, but by being God’s agents in far-reaching spiritual revival which transformed the soul of the nation, abolished class hierarchy and laid the framework for remarkable cultural and economic development.

Typifying their spirit was Ruby Kendrick (pictured), a Texan nurse who died only months after arriving in Korea in 1908 aged only 25. Her words, ‘If I had a thousand lives Korea should have them all’, have inspired literally thousands of Korean Christians since to leave home and country and serve abroad in Christ’s name.

Last week I visited South Korea for an ICMDA board meeting and to take part in the 42^nd ICMDA East Asian Congress drawing Christian doctors from China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mongolia and South Korea.

It was a good opportunity to learn some of the history behind Korea’s explosive Christian growth first hand. 

During the reign of the Joseon Dynasty from AD 792 to 1910, Confucianism was Korea’s official state religion and suppressed all other ideologies, principally Buddhism.

Catholicism was introduced briefly in the 17^th century but was effectively wiped out after a wave of persecution.

When it was reintroduced by Yi Seung-hun in 1785 further persecution followed and many were martyred, especially during the Catholic Persecution of 1801. 

The Joseon Dynasty saw Christianity as a subversive influence and in the later Catholic Persecution of 1866, 8,000 Catholics across the country were killed, including nine French missionaries.

But the opening of Korea to the outside world in the following decades brought religious toleration for the remaining Catholics and also introduced Protestantism.

The first Presbyterian missionary in Korea, Horace Newton Allen, arrived in 1884 and remained in Korea until 1890, by which time he had been joined by many others.

Within twenty years of the arrival of the first resident Protestant missionary, early stirrings of a great revival began to sweep through the staid Presbyterian and Methodist beginnings of missionary effort.

The climax came in 1907 with ‘extraordinary manifestations of power’, that reminded observers of the revivals of John Wesley. Church membership leapt upward, quadrupling in the five years between 1903 and 1908.

In spite of this early spurt the subsequent growth of both Catholicism and Protestantism was gradual during the period of Japanese occupation (1910-1945). By 1945 approximately 2% of the population was Christian.

One of the most important factors leading to widespread acceptance of Christianity in Korea was the identification that many Christians forged with the cause of Korean nationalism during  this period. 

Following the Korean War (1950-1953), when the North and South were divided, rapid growth ensued.

Prior to the Korean War two-thirds of Korean Christians lived in the North, but most later fled to the South.

According to ‘Operation World’, there were 11.8 million members of over 67,000 Christian congregations by 2010, accounting for almost 25% of South Korea’s 48 million population.    

Today South Korea ranks 7th in the world with respect to numbers of Christians in the country. In addition, over 21,000 Korean missionaries serve in 175 countries, making South Korea second only to the US as a missionary sending nation.

South Korean missionaries are especially prevalent in 10/40 Window nations that are hostile to Westerners.

Seoul contains eleven of the world's twelve largest Christian congregations and a number of South Korean Christians, including David Yonggi Cho, senior pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church, with over 700,000 members, have attained worldwide prominence.

The cultural influence of this explosive growth has been immense. Christians have started 293 schools and 40 universities including three of the top five academic institutions.

Christian literature printed for use in Korea, including that used by the network of schools established by Christian missionaries, mostly used the Korean language and the easily learned Hangul script (see left).

This combination of factors resulted in a rise in the overall literacy rate, and a sharp rise in female literacy.

Many Korean Christians believe that their values have had a positive effect on various social relationships.

Traditional Korean society was hierarchically arranged according to Confucian principles under the semi-divine emperor. Women had no social rights, children were totally subservient to their parents, and individuals had no rights except as defined by the overall social system.

This structure was challenged by the Christian teaching that all human beings are created in the image of God and thus that every one of them is equal and has essential worth.

Many South Korean Christians also view their faith as a key factor in the country's dramatic economic growth over the past three decades, believing that its success and prosperity are indications of God's blessing and the product of a strong protestant work ethic. 

This economic growth however has also brought the challenges of materialism and spiritual pride.

According to ‘Operation World’ the church has also struggled at times with authoritarian leadership, divisions, schisms and structures that are not always conducive to effective discipleship.

But in spite of these difficulties, South Korea has rapidly becoming one the greatest power houses of Christianity in the world today.

In this 21st century, the Asian century, the explosive growth of Christian believers in South Korea will be a major influence and key ingredient in world mission as Jesus Christ continues to build his church in the decades to come.

And the Korean church, built through the sacrifices made by those early missionaries, will continue to be an inspiration and challenge to Christians worldwide who desire to see God's Kingdom grow.

Assisted suicide deaths increase by 17% in one year in Washington State

The number of Washington state residents who died of physician-assisted suicide rose to 83 in 2012, up from 70 in 2011, 51 in 2010 and 36 in 2009, when the state’s Death With Dignity Act took effect.

This is an overall increase of 130% since 2009 in the most north-west US state outside Alaska.

The Washington State Department of Health reported in May that 121 patients requested and received lethal doses of drugs in 2012.

The vast majority of the terminally ill patients who received life-ending drugs feared loss of autonomy, dignity and ability to participate in activities that make life enjoyable.

97% were white, 82% had at least some college education and 73% of the patients had cancer, said the report.

Last year I highlighted the huge increase in deaths from assisted suicide in Oregon and Switzerland of 450% and 700% respectively over ten years as further evidence of the incremental extension that inevitably follows any change in the law.

In the Netherlands euthanasia numbers have increased from 15-20% per year since 2006 and in neighbouring Belgium they have increased 509% in the ten years between 2003 and 2012.

Washington is now showing the same pattern with almost a 130% increase in three years.

Careful examination of the Washington report also reveals that:

• Only 3 of the 121 people who were prescribed a lethal dose were given a psychiatric evaluation.

• One person died 150 weeks after receiving the lethal dose while 17 of the participants died more than 6 months after receiving the lethal dose.

• The physician who prescribed the lethal dose was present only five times during ingestion.

• One person died 16 hours after taking the lethal dose.

Margaret Dore, a Washington State attorney, highlights other causes for concern. She argues that the demographics of those who ingested the lethal drugs - ‘older people with money’ - are a prime target for abuse.

The report also gives no information as to whether all of the 83 people who died after ingesting the lethal dose took it voluntarily but merely records  the fact of ‘ingestion’.

Assisted suicide thankfully remains illegal in Britain and we see only a small trickle of 15-20 Britons per year going to the Dignitas facility in Zurich to end their lives.

But with an Oregon/Washington- type law we would see 1,200 deaths annually.

It is no wonder that over 100 attempts to legalise assisted suicide in other US states have failed over the last 15 years and that Oregon and Washington remain the only states to have legalised the practice on the basis of a referendum. 

Let’s not go there.

Courageous MP thrown out of government for refusing to back legal abortion

Ireland's Europe minister quit last Thursday over plans to legalise abortion as Prime Minister Enda Kenny pressed ahead with legislation that has polarised the country.

Kenny has provoked a strong backlash by pushing for access to abortion when a woman threatens suicide, a move that opponents say could easily open the floodgates to abortion on demand.

Lucinda Creighton (pictured), once tipped as a possible leader of the Fine Gael party, was automatically expelled from its grouping in parliament for voting against an amendment to the new law and will now lose her role as minister for European affairs.

‘When it comes to something that is essentially a matter of life and death, I think it is not really possible to compromise,’ Creighton told state broadcaster RTE after the vote.

Ireland’s lower house of parliament passed the bill by 127 votes to 31 and acceptance in the upper house is considered by many now to be a formality.

Under the new bill abortions will be legal if ‘there is a real and substantial risk of loss of the woman’s life by way of suicide’ and if an abortion is the only way of averting the suicide. Three doctors must sign off on each case. No time limits are mentioned in the legislation.

Ms Creighton objected vehemently to this clause. She argued that it was unworkable and ‘has the potential to normalise suicidal ideation by enshrining suicide on our statute book for the first time’.

After the vote Ms Creighton said that she was very sad to be forced out of the party. But in a lengthy apologia, Ms Creighton told the Dail that she was not a ‘pro-life campaigner’ but that that abortion was not a ‘liberal’ cause. It was ‘a tool for the oppression of women’. She also disavowed a religious motivation for her principled stand:

‘There is an emerging consensus in Ireland which suggests that having a sense of morality has something to do with the Catholic Church…. This is deeply worrying. It is a lazy way of attempting to undermine the worth of an argument, without actually dealing with the substance. This is not just a Catholic issue, any more than it is a Protestant or Muslim issue. This is not a religious issue. It is a human rights issue… We all have the right to conscientious objection. It is enshrined in Article 18 of the United Nations, Universal Declaration on Human Rights.’

Martin Luther King Jr's argued in his influential ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ - written 50 years ago in April 1963 – that conscience was the lodestar of an honourable man.

Professor John Wyatt has defended its use in medicine saying that ‘the right of conscience helps to preserve the moral integrity of the individual clinician, preserves the distinctive characteristics and reputation of medicine as a profession, acts as a safeguard against coercive state power, and provides protection from discrimination for those with minority ethical beliefs.’

But the right of conscientious objection is increasingly coming under attack from a number of prominent ethicists and writers. According to Oxford Professor Julian Savalescu, a prominent bioethicist:

'A doctor's conscience has little place in the delivery of modern medical care… If people are not prepared to offer legally permitted, efficient and beneficial care to a patient because it conflicts with their values, they should not be doctors’.

A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine similarly stated:

'As the gate-keepers to medicine, physicians and other health care providers have an obligation to choose specialties that are not moral minefields for them. Do you have qualms about abortion, sterilization and birth control - do not practice women’s health.’  

As I have previously argued there is a strong biblical precedent for the exercise of conscience when governing authorities act to threaten innocent human life.

The Hebrew midwives when ordered by the king of Egypt to kill all male Hebrew children refused to do so and as a result we are told that God commended and rewarded them (Exodus 1:15-22).

Rahab the harlot similarly refused to co-operate with the king of Jericho in handing over the innocent Israelite spies (Joshua 2:1-14). She is later praised for her faith in so doing (Hebrews 11:31; Jas 2:25).

Moreover conscience was often exercised at great personal cost.

The prospect of death as a consequence of disobedience to state law did not stop Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refusing to bow down to the image (Daniel 4:6-8), or Daniel persisting with public prayer (Daniel 6:1-10). They were defiant.

In the New Testament when Peter and John were commanded by the Jewish authorities not to preach the Gospel they replied,  'We must obey God rather than men' and went right on doing it (Acts 5:29).

As Ms Creighton has argued, abortion is not just an issue that concerns Christians.

It also runs counter to the Hippocratic Oath, the Declaration of Geneva, the International Code of Medical Ethics and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In fact the British Medical Association once called it ‘the greatest crime’.

Ms Creighton is to be commended for her courageous stand. What a shame that more did not stand with her. 

New Berlin memorial revives memories of doctors’ role in Nazi holocaust

Officials gathered in Berlin this week to lay the foundations for a monument to the people killed as part of the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ programs.

The symbolic site at Tiergartenstrasse 4 (pictured) was chosen as it was the headquarters of the original project.

The planned exhibit will be dedicated to the victims of the ‘euthanasia’ program, codenamed ‘T4’, used by the Nazis to kill those with physical or mental illnesses.

It will be situated not far from a memorial to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust opened in 2005 and a memorial to the half a million Roma victims of the Nazis opened in 2012.

Between January 1940 and August 1941 about 70,000 people were killed under the T4 programme. Many were sent to gas chambers, others were killed by lethal injection.

The programme was ostensibly shut down in 1941, partly after church protests, but it continued in secret. Historians estimate that between 200,000 and 300,000 people who were either psychotherapy patients or physically disabled were killed altogether.

The planned monument will be a long, blue glass wall - designed by the architects Ursula Wilms and Heinz W. Hallman, along with the artist Nikolaus Koliusis and the federal government plans to contribute 500,000 euros ($643,200) to the costs.

The finished site is tentatively scheduled for inauguration in the second half of 2014.

Many still fail to appreciate the role of doctors in the Nazi holocaust but what ended in the 1940s in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka had much more humble beginnings in the 1930s in nursing homes, geriatric hospitals and psychiatric institutions all over Germany.

When the Nazis arrived, the medical profession was ready and waiting.

The medical and other healthcare staff from T4 and the early killing centres based in hospitals were later redeployed for the killing of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and disloyal Germans. By 1943 there were 24 main death camps (and 350 smaller ones) in operation.

Throughout this process doctors were involved from the earliest stage in reporting, selection, authorisation, execution, certification and research. They were not ordered, but rather empowered to participate.

Leo Alexander (pictured), a psychiatrist with the Office of the Chief of Counsel for War Crimes at Nuremberg, described the process in his classic article 'Medical Science under Dictatorship' which was published in the New England Medical Journal in July 1949:

‘The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement that there is such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted and finally all non-Germans.’ 

The War Crimes Tribunal reported that ‘part of the medical profession co-operated consciously and even willingly’ with the ‘mass killing of sick Germans’.

With the advantage of hindsight we are understandably amazed that the German people and especially the German medical profession were fooled into accepting it. The judgement of the War Crimes Tribunal in 1949 as to how they were fooled was as follows.

'Had the profession taken a strong stand against the mass killing of sick Germans before the war, it is conceivable that the entire idea and technique of death factories for genocide would not have materialized...but far from opposing the Nazi state militantly, part of the medical profession co-operated consciously and even willingly, while the remainder acquiesced in silence. Therefore our regretful but inevitable judgement must be that the responsibility for the inhumane perpetrations of Dr Brandt (pictured left)...and others, rests in large measure upon the bulk of the medical profession; because the profession without vigorous protest, permitted itself to be ruled by such men.' (War Crimes Tribunal. 'Doctors of Infamy'. 1948)

Britain’s Black Triangle Campaign, which was set up to combat discrimination against disabled people, uses as its symbol the ‘black triangle’ which the Nazis forced people with mental and other disabilities to wear in the extermination camps during the Holocaust.

The generic classification they used was ‘arbeitsscheu’ – literally ‘workshy’.

The lessons are clear. The holocaust had small beginnings and advanced in a series of imperceptibly small steps. The medical profession accepted its basic premises (that there is such a thing as ‘a life not worth living’ and that killing such people was ‘an act of mercy’) and failed to protest whilst a small section of its members actively acquiesced to involvement.

RCGP members should take these lessons to heart as they contemplate whether or not to drop their official opposition to a change in the law to allow doctors help people take their own lives.

Guardian health editor jumps onto suicide promotion bandwagon

The Guardian this week has run the story of a man with motor neurone disease who wants to end his life.

Paul Chamberlain, 66, a former chartered accountant from Surrey, we are told, has obtained the drugs he needs ‘from overseas’.

Health editor Sarah Boseley (pictured) uses Chamberlain’s case to promote Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill, which has been drafted by Dignity in Dying (the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society) and is due to have its second reading in the House of Lords this autumn.

A Samaritans contact phone number is given for those who might be ‘struggling to cope’ but this is a largely empty gesture aimed at giving respectability to a piece of journalistic propaganda which suggests that it can be both right and reasonable for sick people to kill themselves.

Boseley also breaks key media guidelines on suicide prevention. 

The WHO international guidelines on suicide portrayal refer to over 50 published studies, systematic reviews of which have consistently drawn the same conclusion, that media reporting of suicide can lead to imitative suicidal behaviours.

This phenomenon is variably termed suicide contagion, copycat suicide, suicide cluster or the Werther effect.

Its recommendations to media professionals include the following:

· Avoid language which sensationalises or normalises suicide, or presents it as a solution to problems
· Avoid prominent placement and undue repetition of stories about suicide
· Avoid explicit description of the method used in a completed or attempted suicide
· Avoid providing detailed information about the site of a completed or attempted suicide
· Take particular care in reporting celebrity suicides

By portraying this unfortunate man as a hero who is taking a brave and reasonable course of action, and by failing to do justice to the wider context of the debate, Boseley is steering vulnerable people toward suicide.

In so doing she has also bought into the myth that we should consider suicide in people who are sick or disabled as somehow different from suicide for those with mental health problems or who feel their lives are no longer worth living for other reasons.

But the idea that suicide should be promoted in the former group but prevented in the latter creates a false distinction and is actually profoundly discriminatory.

In reality most sick and disabled people do not want and to die and most people who do wish to die are neither sick nor disabled.  

Our response to all suicidal ideation should not be to hand over a poisoned chalice but to ask how we can manage the underlying problem better.

There are about 5,000 people in the UK with motor neurone disease (MND). About 1,000 die with the condition each year, three every day.

The vast majority do not want so-called ‘assisted dying’ (a euphemism for being poisoned with lethal drugs) but rather ‘assisted living’ until they die naturally.

But Boseley’s article gives no voice to this silent group. Nor are we told anything about the care available for people with MND.  No one representing the majority of those with the disease (like Alistair Banks) is given an opportunity to put a contrary view.

We also learn nothing about the rapid escalation of euthanasia and assisted suicide cases in the Netherlands, Oregon, Switzerland and Belgium which have legalised the practice but instead, without any evidence, are assured that such problems are imaginary.

Is it mere coincidence that this story follows hot on the heels of the visit of campaigner Philip Nitschke (aka Dr Death) who has just run a seminar in London advising attendees about how to obtain lethal drugs over the internet?

Thus far over 50 people in his native Australia have killed themselves with a drug which he promotes. One third of these were people in their 20s and 30s. Was it Nitschke, I wonder, who is also ‘helping’ Chamberlain?

Assisting suicide is illegal in Britain for good reasons.

First, any change in the law to allow assisted suicide or euthanasia would place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives for fear of being a financial, emotional or care burden upon others. This would especially affect people who are disabled, elderly, sick or depressed.

Second, persistent requests for euthanasia are extremely rare if people are properly cared for so our priority must rather be to ensure that good care addressing people's physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs is accessible to all.

Third, hard cases, like that of Paul Chamberlain, make bad law. Even in a free democratic society there are limits to human freedom and the law must not be changed to accommodate the wishes of a small number of desperate and determined people.

In accepting that suicide is sometimes right and that there is such a thing as a life not worth living Boseley crosses two critical and dangerous rubicons.

Her propaganda and Falconer’s bill should be given similar short shrift. 

Leading parliamentary think tank says Lord Falconer’s ‘Assisted Dying’ Bill fails public safety test

Living and Dying Well (LDW) is a public policy research organisation established in 2010 to promote clear thinking on the end-of-life debate and to explore the complexities surrounding 'assisted dying' and other end-of-life issues.

It has just published a comprehensive report on Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill which was introduced into the House of Lords on 15 May.

Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill [HL Bill 24] is the fourth of its kind to come before the House of Lords in the last ten years and seeks to authorise assisted suicide for mentally competent adults with less than six months to live.

None of its predecessors has made progress and the last one (Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill) was rejected in May 2006.

LDW’s report, jointly authored by eleven members of the House of Lords, concludes that Falconer’s bill ‘is little different from Lord Joffe's - it seeks to license doctors to supply lethal drugs to terminally ill patients to enable them to end their lives’.

The authors include leading lawyers, doctors and disabled peoples’ advocates including Baroness Butler Sloss, Lord Carlile, Baroness Finlay and Baroness Campbell.

They recognise that ‘some people support legalisation of assisted suicide on grounds of autonomy and others oppose it as immoral’ but then seek to assess the bill on the ‘criterion of public safety’ - whether its enactment would ‘put seriously ill people at risk of harm’.

The bill, say the Peers, ‘contains no safeguards, beyond stating eligibility criteria, to govern the assessment of requests for assisted suicide’. Furthermore, it ‘relegates important questions such as how mental capacity and clear and settled intent are to be established to codes of practice to be drawn up after an assisted suicide law has been approved by Parliament’.

This is ‘wholly inadequate’ and on the issue of safeguards alone, they argue,  ‘the bill is not fit for purpose’.

It ‘places responsibility for assessing applicants for assisted suicide and supplying them with lethal drugs on the shoulders of the medical profession’ but at the same time ‘ignores expert medical evidence given to Parliament in recent years regarding the unreliability of prognoses of terminal illness at the range it envisages’.

‘Other considerations aside’, they assert, ‘the bill fails the public safety test by a considerable margin’.

The report concludes that the law that we have already ‘has the discretion to deal with exceptional cases in an exceptional way’ and that Lord Falconer's bill, by creating ‘a licensing system’ for assisted suicide crosses ‘an important Rubicon’.

To create exceptions to the blanket prohibition on assisted suicide which are ‘based on arbitrary criteria such as terminal illness or mental capacity, is to create lines in the sand, easily crossed and hard to defend. No convincing case has been advanced as to why these important considerations should be set aside.'

The tightly drafted report runs to eleven pages and is well worthy of careful study.