BOTH advocates and opponents of assisted dying use heart-rending stories to make their case. This is as it should be. The debate is about far more than abstract ethics or cold statistics: it affects real, acutely vulnerable people and their loved ones. Those who want a change in the law tell stories of relatives who have endured agonising deaths, bitter at the sense that their choice over when and how to die has been removed. Opponents, such as Matthew Hall, writing in The Spectator last month, bring chilling despatches from countries where euthanasia is already legal (in this case, Canada): where life is sometimes treated with cavalier disregard, the bar to an assisted death worryingly low.

Such stories matter all the more because the UK could be reaching a pivotal moment. The Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Bill to legalise assisted dying came first in the Private Member’s Bill ballot, which, parliamentary experts say, means that it is almost certain to be given time for debate and to go to a vote. The Bill might well encounter obstacles, and the outcome is far from known (the Government has said, rightly, that MPs will be allowed to vote with their consciences). But the Prime Minister’s sympathy for assisted dying is on record; it would not be surprising, should the Bill pass its first vote, of the Government to provide the time needed to ease its passage through Parliament.

Proponents and opponents will, no doubt, be reaching for their placards, preparing to petition lawmakers either way. There is not space here to rehearse the arguments of either side (and they have been made on these pages before). While Churches publicly oppose any form of assisted dying, we acknowledge that a growing minority of Christians are now in favour; and we should recognise that such convictions are born of deep ethical reflection and pastoral experience (as, indeed, they are for opponents).

But here is something that both sides should be able to agree on: this is not the time to change the law. As the Government itself has said, the health and social-care system is broken: chronically under-funded and far from able, at the present time, to care adequately for the elderly and chronically unwell. Palliative care is also severely underfunded. In such conditions, legalising assisted dying would be reckless, putting the most vulnerable at risk of feeling pressured, or even coerced, into ending their lives early. This should alarm proponents of assisted dying as much as it does opponents. Talk of safeguards rings hollow when the structures are not in place to give people a genuine choice (as countries such as Canada show). We know that opponents of assisted dying warn frequently of the dangers of a “slippery slope”; proponents of assisted dying would do well to acknowledge this risk — and to wait for a change in the law until safeguards can be better guaranteed. Freedom of choice, as Andrew Brown suggests, does not exist in a vacuum.

The Church Times and Modern Church will be hosting a webinar on assisted dying on Thursday 28 November. Find out more here