Humanists and atheists are reveling in victory as an island known for its Celtic Christian heritage has become the first nation in the British Isles to legalize killing terminally ill adults.
On Tuesday, the Isle of Man parliament passed the euphemistically named Assisted Dying Bill, first introduced by medical doctor and politician Alex Allinson in June 2002, after feeble opposition from the ecumenical Churches Alive in Mann failed to rally the backing needed to defeat it.
The bill would allow terminally ill adults to kill themselves with medical assistance if they expect to live less than a year. Doctors have to opt in to provide the service. Patients seeking to commit suicide must have lived on the island for at least five years.
The bill’s passage comes at a critical juncture, as euthanasia advocates and lawmakers are attempting to push similar bills through the parliaments in England, Wales, and Scotland.
Prelates Play Safe on Pro-Life Issues
While the Catholic archbishop of Liverpool, who oversees the island, was silent, the Anglican bishop, Patricia Hillas, a member of the island’s Upper House, failed to get support for a new amendment ensuring that no one has to go through an assisted death alone.
The Churches Alive in Mann, which includes Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, United Reformed, Living Hope, Broadway Baptist, Elim Onchan, and the Salvation Army, complained of a bias and several inaccuracies in the government’s consultation process.
The ecumenical body said that the “legislation would inevitably turn us into a less compassionate society” and urged the government “to invest in extending and deepening the Island’s Hospice and palliative care provision as a life-giving alternative to legalising assisted suicide.”
“We speak with one voice in saying that we do not support any changes to the law which would permit assisted dying, more accurately described as physician-assisted suicide. While it is a duty for a caring society to relieve suffering, the artificial termination of life must be resisted in the strongest terms,” they said in a joint statement.
Faithful Pastor Laments Lack of Opposition
The Rev. Glenn Walters, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Peel, who led the Christian resistance to the island’s legalization of abortion in 2019, told The Stream there had been “very little opposition to the bill.”
“I suspect that the majority of people are in favor of it or, at the very least, most of them are too busy enjoying the benefits of living very comfortably in a place that has very low taxation and has one of the highest standards of living in the world, to even think about ‘rocking the boat’ and opposing our leaders,” Walters remarked.
“The bill confirms to me that Dr. Allinson, who studied for many years at medical school to look after people, loves killing them and in so doing, he does the lust of his father the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning,” Walters added. “I can’t help wondering what his response would be if his wife or children ever became candidates under the new legislation.”
A third of doctors who responded to an Isle of Man Medical Society survey in 2023 said they would consider leaving the island if the legislation was introduced. The poll also found 34% of respondents would consider leaving the island if the new legislation was introduced.
Abortion Was the Slippery Slope
“I was active on the Isle of Man a few years back when the spirit of death was aggressively advancing towards permitting abortion,” pro-lifer Dave Brennan told The Stream. Brennan is the director of Brephos, which is part of the Center for Bioethical Reform UK. “Although late to the party compared to the rest of the UK, the Isle of Man leapfrogged England and Wales and most of the world onto one of the most extreme abortion regimes in the world.
“It is therefore unsurprising, though still deeply shocking, that they have outrun the rest of us in passing ‘Assisted Dying,'” he added. “They do not want to be outdone in the killing of innocents. Now that they are killing the young and the old, it is only a matter of time before the island effectively dies out, or at least grinds to a deathly halt, socioeconomic demise. A society that commits suicide obviously cannot thrive or even survive.”
The Isle of Man, which is home to 84,000 people and 94 churches, legalized abortion up to 24 weeks gestation in 2019 with very little opposition from Christians. Some 300 abortions were carried out on the island between 2020 and 2021.
In 2020, most of those abortions were administered to women between the ages of 25 and 29; the next year, most were performed on women between the ages of 20 and 24.
Humanists and Atheists Triumphant Over Christians
Humanists U.K. and its coalition partner, My Death, My Decision Isle of Man, welcomed the historic vote.
“This bill will ensure people on the Isle of Man will finally have choice and dignity at the end of their lives,” said My Death, My Decision Chairwoman Vicky Christian. “I am incredibly proud of our island for not only listening to its people but, more importantly, listening to those facing the end of life. In this debate, compassion and evidence have prevailed.”
Humanists U.K. Chief Executive Andrew Copson was similarly thrilled.
“Evidence and compassion have won out against attempts to wreck and delay the legislation,” he said. “We urge parliamentarians looking on from elsewhere — from Westminster to Holyrood — to follow in the courageous footsteps of the Isle of Man’s politicians and act so that their citizens can also have the option of an assisted death.”
Big money from the depopulation lobby was used to boost the U.K. Assisted Dying Bill, The Stream earlier reported. Ethicist and philosopher Dr. Calum Miller also raised concerns about “shadowy dark money behind the assisted suicide/euthanasia bill connected to American global population reduction organizations.”
Miller, a 2015 University of Oxford Medical School graduate who currently works in Britain’s National Health Service and who has published more than 30 academic papers on medicine, law, philosophy, and ethics, wrote on X, “This is one of the most sinister things I’ve ever discovered.”
He identified the lobbying group More in Common as one of the key funders and publicists behind the legislation.
“This whole campaign is obviously extremely well-funded,” he said. “They have way more publicity than the anti-euthanasia side, e.g. seemingly hiring out half the billboards on London Underground — especially at Westminster where the tunnels are full of them!”
“Assisted Dying” Is a Euphemism
Critics of “assisted dying” have warned against using the term as a euphemism that sanitizes the reality of killing the terminally ill.
“Assisted-suicide advocates claim they are not arguing for euthanasia or assisted suicide, but ‘assisted dying,'” the pro-life group Care for Life Jersey explained. “The truth is that ‘assisted dying’ is an Orwellian euphemism that has been created to sanitise what is being argued for, and remove its moral and medical implications.”
In a paper titled “Defining the Terms of the Debate: Euthanasia and Euphemism,” Professor David Albert Jones, director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, wrote,
The fundamental problem with the term “assisted dying” is that it invites confusion because it is ambiguous.
The language of “medical aid-in-dying” or “assisted dying” is particularly misleading. These phrases seem to imply that those who die other than by Euthanasia and /or Assisted Suicide do not receive medical assistance when they are dying.
Jones, a research fellow at Oxford University and professor of bioethics at St. Mary’s University, elaborated:
That is simply false. What is more, the description ‘assisted dying’, taken at face value, should be applicable to the provision of palliative care to the dying patient. However, what is being proposed in legislation to permit ‘assisted dying’ is not the palliation of symptoms in those who are dying. That is already permitted. What is being proposed, specifically, is the intentional ending of human life.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.
The post Churches Put Up Feeble Fight as British Island Blazes a Trail in Killing Terminally Ill appeared first on The Stream.
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