Drive for assisted suicide comes from a need to control, British archbishop tells Crux Now

The senior archbishop in charge of life issues in England and Wales says better social and palliative care would go a long way toward helping people recover a sense of life as gift and defend against the fearful loss of control that end-of-life challenges inevitably bring.

The Lead Bishop for Life Issues at the bishops’ conference of England and Wales, Archbishop John Sherrington of Liverpool, makes his remarks in a broad-ranging two-part interview with Crux Now (Part 1 is here).

“Everybody is fearful of dying, everybody is fearful of pain and it is very hard to come to terms with living in a severely disabled state and for that reason I think people are arguing for assisted suicide,” he says.

“What we need to do,” Sherrington says, “is reshape conversation to help people understand how living with a disability or in a disabled state is also an important part of life – and probably if we could offer better social and palliative care then many people would choose that.”

“There’s the fear of loss of control, there’s the fear of loss of autonomy,” Sherrington says.

“That word – autonomy – is fueling many people’s arguments,” he says, “because we