We can't separate God from the assisted dying argument

As Friday’s Commons vote on assisted dying draws closer, the debate surrounding it, which has so far focused on issues about the terminally ill, pain, personal autonomy, the ethics of killing, and care, seems to have moved from respectful dialogue to becoming more fraught and personal.

- CATHERINE PEPINSTER

One of the foremost advocates of assisted dying, Lord Falconer, has taken on the justice secretary Shabana Mahmood after she said that she would vote against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, introduced by her fellow Labour MP Kim Leadbeater. Mahmood has said she opposes the bill – it is a free vote, not whipped – on the grounds that she has an unshakeable belief in the sanctity and value of human life. She described legalised assisted dying, in a letter to her constituents, as a state death service.

According to Falconer – a Labour peer and former minister who has skin in the game through promoting a previous bill on assisted dying – Mahmood, who is Muslim, is imposing her religious beliefs on everyone else.

Into the fray stepped the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, who shares Mahmood’s view of the sanctity of life and told Times Radio that he wasn’t sure that Falconer should be in politics if he can’t extend the democratic space to people with religious beliefs.

Cardinal Nichols has a point. Many people of faith – be they Christian or Muslim or from many other religions – will see Falconer’s dismissal of Mahmood as typical of the one prejudice that is allowed nowadays. Dismissing somebody on account of their gender, their sexuality, or their race is beyond the pale. But being anti-religion is not.