A very good piece from Archbishop Rowan Williams (via Scandal of Particularity):

Do I have a right to die? Religious believers answer for themselves that they do not. For a believer to say, “The time could come when I find myself in a situation that has no meaning, and I reserve the right to end my life in such a situation,” would be to say that there is some aspect of human life where God cannot break through. It would be to say that when I as an individual can no longer give meaning to my life, it has no value, and human dignity is best served by ending it.

That would be in the eyes of most traditional believers, Christian or otherwise, an admission that faith had failed. It would imply that life at a certain level of suffering or incapacity simply could no longer be lived in relation to God. …

What anyone’s life means is not exclusively their own affair. He lives in relation – to others and to a society. At the simplest level, what often most shocks and grieves people who have been close to a suicide is the feeling that someone who has killed himself did not know what he really meant to his friends or family, did not know he was loved and valued. And even when someone who contemplates suicide is confident that he has no friends or families to hurt, we can hardly say that his life is without significance just because he says so; the society he lives in has a view about the worth of human life which can not be mortgaged to how any individual feels.

This argument begins to bite in the present debate because assisted dying involves others in an act of suicide. Someone else has to accept your decision that prolonged life could have no meaning, and to act on that decision. We rightly talk a good deal about the dangers of the elderly and dying being pressurised by relatives or hospitals to take a quick way out that is convenient for others. What about the pressure a sick person who is determined to die places on those around them?

Rights create responsibilities, we often like to say. Does the recognition of a legal right to assisted dying entail a responsibility on others to kill?

Read the rest.