Assisted suicide: a clash of two worldviews

In a column for The Times, commentator Matthew Parris said that legalising assisted suicide would put pressure on older people and those with a terminal illness to end their lives. In his view, this is a good thing.

In a similar article for the The Spectator, he said that legalising assisted suicide was simply the outworking of Darwinian social thought. Our moral codes, he argued, are driven by the Darwinian notion of the fight for survival, whether we accept this or not.

Mr Parris is to be commended for his honesty. In the assisted suicide debate, the pro-assisted suicide lobby often uses euphemisms and deception to advance its cause. Consider the deliberate employment of the term ‘assisted dying’, which no Christian should ever use.