A West Sussex man who assisted the suicide of his seriously-ill wife has effectively been let off with a twelve-month suspended jail sentence. After his wife's previous suicide attempts had failed, Robert Cook placed a plastic bag and pillow over the face of his wife Vanessa in October 2006, after she had first taken an overdose of pills. Mrs Cook suffered from multiple sclerosis and had asked her husband to help her end her life.

Strangely, Mr Cook was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, rather than the weightier charge of murder. This decision threatens to pave the way for the legalisation, or at least acceptance in law, of euthanasia. Yet, Mr Cook freely admits that his clear intention was to bring life to an end, so it is not at all obvious why he was not convicted of murder. Any grounds of diminished responsibility should surely be taken into consideration at the point of determining the punishment for a crime, not when determining whether or not a crime has been committed. This confusion over where in the judicial process extenuating circumstances ought to influence proceedings also lies behind perceived injustice, for instance, when drunk drivers are seemingly let off too leniently after causing the death of other road users. The law would benefit from revision on this point.

Back in the early 1990s, the Jubilee Centre produced a couple of Cambridge Papers discussing euthanasia. In those, we concluded:

The value which the Bible places upon human life has nothing to do with physical or mental perfection, nor with economic utility. A human being is valuable irrespective of what they can do, but simply because of what they are, made in the image of God. The whole human race is "handicapped" as a result of the Fall, but our value to God has not been forfeited in consequence. On the contrary, Jesus insists we are precious to the fatherly heart of God (Matthew 6:25-26). The suffering and the physically or mentally disadvantaged are not to be dismissed because of the inferior "quality" of their lives. Rather they are encouraged to look forward to that redeemed world where "the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped" (Isaiah 35:5)...

Modern analgesic drugs mean that few if any need to suffer irremediable pain. but care for the suffering demands more than access to a morphine injection. Jesus' matchless story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) remains a classic exposition of the sacrificial nature of neighbour-love. And his final words to the scribe whose question prompted that parable remain a startling challenge to all who would aspire to Christian discipleship: "Go and do likewise."

The debate about euthanasia not only provides Christians with a special opportunity for apologetics, it provides an opportunity too for the demonstration of that practical love which Jesus insisted was the hallmark of his community (John 13:34-35). If we fail in the latter we shall have no right to expect to succeed in the former.

As a final thought, for those who dismiss any concerns over "the slippery slope", it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves of the process of moral attrition that allowed the killing of at least 275,000 people, including those suffering from disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease, as part of the Nazi euthanasia programme in pre-War Germany. The programme's leader, Dr Karl Brandt later claimed at the Nuremburg trials, "My underlying motive was to help individuals who could not help themselves ... I did not feel it in any way to be unethical or immoral." Commenting on the process in the New England Medical Journal in July 1949, the psychiatrist Dr Leo Alexander said, "The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of 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 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."

Even if we forget our nation's Christian heritage, may we not forget the lessons of history.

• 
• Share