UK Parliament Shoots Down Assisted Suicide Bill

Most people in the UK support assisted dying, or assisted suicide, for those who are near the end of their lives. It wasn’t surprising, then, that the “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill” was introduced in 2024. The bill was designed to give the ability to “adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life.”

So, it was perhaps surprising when, after a couple of years in Parliament, the bill fell earlier this week. What was the process? Why did it happen? And what does it say about the future of our aging societies?

Where is assisted suicide legal? 

Dr. Jim Denison has written an in-depth resource on the complications of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Euthanasia is when a doctor terminates a patient’s life at the patient’s request. Assisted suicide is when a doctor provides life-ending medication for the patient to take themselves. As Dr. Denison writes, “Both active euthanasia and ‘assisted suicide’ are unbiblical. Active euthanasia is the overt, intentional taking of life, and is prohibited by the Sixth Commandment.” 

In some states, assisted dying is legal in a narrow range of situations. This is a clear example of where our country’s laws don’t overlap with divine justice. Thankfully, the laws are quite strict, and relatively few take their own lives. 

Our neighbors in Canada, however, have much worse laws. So-called MAID (medical assistance in dying) is far more permissive—people as early as 18 can request it. Currently, Canada is set to allow people to request MAID for only reasons of mental health in 2027. 

However, their parliament is currently debating whether to indefinitely push back this law. We can only pray they do. Such an extension flies in the face of good ethics, Christian teaching, and psychological research. 

Even without this extension, assisted suicide is now around the fourth or fifth leading cause of death in Canada; around one in 20 deaths is due to assisted suicide. 

The UK narrowly avoided legalizing assisted suicide last week

It seemed like this could be the dystopian future of the UK as well. Around three in four UK citizens support the assisted dying bill, which allows people near their deaths the ability to request assisted suicide. 

So, it was perhaps surprising when the bill fell through. In Parliament, there are two-year sessions. This particular bill, which started in the House of Commons, needed to be passed before the end of the Parliamentary session in 2026. However, the House of Lords, the unelected half of the UK government, requested 1,200 amendments to the bill. They ran out of time to examine all the amendments, and the bill fell through. 

Recently, the sponsor of the bill in the House of Commons tried again with an identical bill. The House of Commons could have decided to overrule the House of Lords and pass this bill anyway if it made it through the second round of voting, but such a move would have been extremely controversial. Normally, the House of Lords and Commons must agree on a law and its wording before the king ceremonially signs it into law. 

So, the new round of MPs in the House of Commons voted against the bill. Some voted on conscience and arguments, others voted against the rushed process, and still others said they agreed in principle but thought the bill’s safeguards had been watered down. Regardless, it was a bright day for the UK. It likely won’t be many years until a similar bill is put forward.

The bulwarks in the UK against assisted suicide

While the majority of people in the UK favor the law, or one like it, experts are split, and doctors are far more likely to be against the measures. For example, the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK surveyed its members. Around 30 percent said the college should oppose assisted dying, 60 percent said they should abstain from supporting or opposing, and 0 percent said they should support it. 

Christians, although technically a minority now in England and Wales, still have some sway in public opinion. The Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, Stephen Wright, said about the bill:

Life is a gift from God. Every person is made in the image and likeness of God, and every person, no matter what their position in life is or whatever they may be going through, has a God-given dignity that must be respected. It’s not for human beings to kill one another in any context. 

England’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, wrote that the bill would symbolize that “we are a society that believes that some lives are not worth living.” As Nancy Pearcey writes in Love Thy Body, there is a strong “death movement” in the West, where our living bodies are treated as shells for our thinking, feeling selves. So, if we are in great pain and sadness, according to this view, it should be our right to freely do what we want with our bodies—even destroying them. 

So, how can Christians fight against this “death movement”?

The new “least of these” in our societies: the elderly

In developed countries, from South Korea to Germany to the US to Canada, our populations are aging, with a growing share of older people. There are fewer younger people. And the culture of Western countries is highly independent, so many elderly folks are left to their own. With so few young people to work and pay taxes, Social Security will slowly run out.

I, and others, predict that rising costs of living and healthcare, elderly and sick people, may pressure them into assisted suicide so as not to burden their children. This led my pastor in Scotland, Paul Reese, to say that the “least of these” in coming decades, the most oppressed and cast-aside group, might be the elderly (Matthew 25:40). I tend to agree. 

While living in Scotland, two of my closest friends were doctors, both of whom worked in hospice and palliative care. They served as Christian lights in a dark place—an aging population in the UK, often struggling with medical visits and isolated from family. Another close friend also served in a Christian ministry to befriend the lonely elderly.

How can you push against the culture of individualism? How can you find ways to make the “way, truth, and life” known to the elderly?