EIGHT bishops have joined more than 100 women of different faiths in signing an open letter that says that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill “could create a new tool to harm vulnerable women”.
The Bill, which seeks to legalise assisted dying, has completed the Committee Stage, and is due to return to the House of Commons on 25 April for the Report Stage (Leader comment, 4 April)
The letter, published on the website of the think tank Theos on Sunday, is signed by 112 women, who include the Bishops of London, Gloucester, Stepney, Dover, Lancaster, Bristol, Croydon, and Aston. Among the other signatories are the director of Theos, Chine McDonald; the Assistant Secretary General, Muslim Council of Britain, Dr Naomi Green; the President of the Catholic Union of Great Britain, Baroness Hollins; and the chief executive of Jewish Women’s Aid, Sam Clifford.
The letter says that the Bill “has insufficient safeguards to protect some of the most marginalised in society, particularly women subjected to gender-based violence, and abuse by a partner, who also experience intersecting barriers to a full and safe life”.
It continues: “We are concerned that the proposed legislation could create a new tool to harm vulnerable women, particularly those being subjected to domestic abuse and coercive control, by helping them to end their lives.”
The letter refers to a report published last month by the Domestic Homicide Project, which found that, for the second year running, the number of domestic abuse victims who died by suicide in England and Wales was higher than the number of people killed by an abusive partner.
Furthermore, the letter says, domestic abuse victims who are also women of faith “can face a particular form of abuse at the hands of their perpetrators, who may weaponise theologies and culture to harm and control their victims.
“We are concerned that the assisted dying legislation, as it stands, fails to take account of how faith and its role at the end of life, as well as its use by both perpetrators and the women they abuse, create complex dynamics that can lead to vulnerable women, who may also hold strong religious beliefs, seeing no way out but death.”
The letter identifies “poverty and other inequalities” that “increase the risk of women and girls being subjected to violence, ill health and the quality of care and support they receive from statutory institutions and civil society”. The voices of “women who are from Black and minoritised communities, disabled women, migrant women and working-class women”, are “absent from conversations about this Bill”, the letter says.
The letter concludes: “If assisted dying is seen as a response to alleviate suffering, without addressing the underlying structural issues that make life difficult and safeguard against harm, it could put undue pressure on vulnerable women to choose death over inadequate care.
“This is no way to legislate, especially not on matters of life and death. We have serious concerns about the bill and its lack of safeguards. The bill has too much potential to hurt vulnerable people and so we are uniting as women from across faith traditions to speak up for vulnerable women, including victims of violence against women and girls, and disabled women, and raise our concerns publicly.”
The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, in a pastoral letter last week, asked Roman Catholics to urge their MPs to vote against the Bill.
“There are serious reasons for doing so,” he wrote. “At this point we wish not simply to restate our objections in principle, but to emphasise the deeply flawed process undergone in Parliament thus far.”
The Bill would, he said, “fundamentally change many of the key relationships in our way of life”, such as those within the family, between doctors and patients, and within the NHS. “Yet there has been no Royal Commission or independent inquiry ahead of its presentation. It is a Private Member’s Bill.”
MPs had had insufficient time to debate the Bill before they voted for it at Second Reading, he said, and the Committee that examined it “took only three days of evidence: not all voices were heard, and it comprises an undue number of supporters of the Bill. In short, this is no way to legislate on such an important and morally complex issue.”
A consequence of this “flawed process” had been that “many vital questions remain unanswered”, he wrote.
