Charlie Wolf

The Sanctity Of Life Is Based On More Than Opinion Polls

Thursday 4th 2010f February 2010

There has been a continual assault on the moral fabric of our nation and societal values by secularists. Not content to live their own lives as they please within the freedoms granted to all of us, they wish to use events to push their own agenda on society.

This week the issue of assisted suicide has risen back to the top of the news agenda, based on two high-profile court cases and comments made by the author Sir Terry Pratchett in this year's Dimbleby Lecture.

This should concern not just our religious community but those who believe in the fabric of this nation, its democracy and the principles it was founded on.
In his lecture, Sir Terry has called for a panel or tribunal, consisting of a doctor and a lawyer familiar with family law, to authorise instances when family members would be able to help a terminally ill patient commit suicide. Pratchett, who is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, wants to offer himself as a test case.

It was also in the last two weeks that Kay Gildersdale, whose 31-year-old daughter Lynn, who suffered from ME, was found not guilty of her attempted murder. She had administered a dose of morphine after her daughter, who had expressed a wish to die, had fallen unconscious in a suicide attempt.

In a YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph (which is also consistent with several other similar polls) more than four out of five people believe that "a relative should be allowed to help a terminally ill loved one take their own life". Three quarters of those polled want the law that makes assisted suicide a crime, amended. "Even if the law was not changed," the newspaper reports, "80 percent of the 2,053 people questioned said relatives of terminally ill people should not be prosecuted."

This is all emotional stuff.

That is why polls should be viewed with some suspicion. Laws are put in place to protect individuals and the wider public at large. The polls are not reflecting the consequences of legalising what is essentially the killing off of the weaker members of society; the sick and the dying. Polls only reflect the effectiveness of activists and agenda setters who don't set their arguments on rational grounds but tug at the heart strings and play on the emotions. They don't present the whole picture or all the sides of an argument, nor do they properly frame or present the true consequences of a change in the law.

As George Pitcher writes in the Daily Telegraph, legal shenanigans (my term) may be in play here. For instance, in the Gildersdale case, in which the judge, Mr. Justice Bean, criticised the Crown Prosecution Service for bringing the case in the first place, Pitcher reports: "There are suspicions in some senior legal circles that the case was spun; better in the current climate, for an acquittal for attempted murder than a high-profile conviction for assisted suicide."
The case was possibly brought simply for the reason that it would fail. Ann Widdecombe and others have laid down an Early Day Motion (EDM) pressing the DPP for clarification on his motives.

This would not be the first time that political activists on a number of issues from gay rights, climate change, assisted suicide and euthanasia, have tried to circumvent our elected representatives in parliament, by fiat through the courts.

It is right that parliamentarians - who do look at the wider issues - have rejected calls for assisted suicides to be made legal in this country.
Life, in this country, must remain sacred. Every society needs unchanging bedrock ideals on which to build. There is none more important than the respect for life. If not, we become commodities.

I am sure that Sir Terry Pratchett, who has delivered his arguments with honesty and sincerity, is a good man facing a very scary chapter in his life. We can only offer him our prayers and the wish for many healthy days to come; for the strength to him, and his family who must care for him in his final days.
It is that ability to care for others, for the weak and sick, that defines us as a people. Assisted suicide and euthanasia would rob us of these important obligations.

For the Jewish community, it seems that all we do these days is defend Israel.
Yes, it is needed and important. But we are more than just the Children of
Israel, tied to that land with a God-given bond.
We are also members of a religion based on the laws of God, one that rightly holds life to be sacred. The respect for the sacredness of life is not based on several tragic events but has served us for millennia.

On this issue, united as a community, we need to speak out.