What is in Kelvin's Head?

Assisted Dying – Why I’ve changed my mind

15/03/2026

The time has come to admit it. I’ve changed my mind about assisted dying.

As a priest, the presumption is generally made that I’m against it for religious reasons. Recent aggressive campaigning by those in favour of allowing doctors to help people to end their lives has been relentlessly dismissive of religious reasons for being against it. As though religious people have no consciences worth respecting, no bodies of their own, no pain and no right to be heard.

The truth is, though I am very obviously religious, I do not have any religious reasons for objecting to the proposed law in principle but the longer that I’ve spent time with those who are actually dying the more I find myself unable to support a change in the law. My concerns are not religious but practical.

For a long time I was fairly uncommitted in this debate. My tendency would be to think that the alleviation of pain was the ultimate goal for anyone at the end of life and to take the view that preventing pain might well be a justification for allowing someone to end their life early.

More recently though experience has suggested to me that the question is a good deal more complicated than that. And so I find that I’ve changed my mind. From being moderately supportive of a change in the law, I now find myself fully opposed to the new legislation.

I remember the day when I changed my mind very well too. I had been called to the deathbed of someone whom I did not know. Before I could get into the room with the dying person, their family met me in the corridor. They asked me whether I could help them as things were very difficult.

“We were just wondering whether you could ask the doctors to speed things up a bit.”

I replied that I couldn’t as the law wouldn’t allow such a thing. And I asked why. What was it? Did they need me to help them to speak to the doctors about trying to get some better pain regulation?

“No” came the answer, “No – the thing is we’ve a skiing holiday booked and we leave on Monday – we just need this to be over so we can get away”.

That was the moment that I realised that not everyone dies with people close to them who have their best interests at heart.

Those who are dying are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. They are losing their power to make independent choices. They are vulnerable to the attitudes of everyone they encounter. And almost everyone whom they encounter may have a financial or other interest not only in their death but in its timing.

Spending time with the dying, I’ve also realised that those at the end of life are particularly vulnerable to societal assumptions about being a burden and causing a fuss.

Increasingly, funeral directors are making good money from ghoulishly promoting Direct Cremations – the disposing of bodies without ceremony or the presence of loved ones. To do so, they repeat again and again in their advertising, suggests that it is better to face death without causing a fuss.

Yet everyone who grieves knows that death in itself is disruptive. Death and grief change lives. They are not to be dismissed. No amount of trying not to cause a fuss changes that.

It has all made me realise that when I die, I want everyone to know that I want plenty of fuss. Fuss is how we show one another that we love them.

The desire to cause others no fuss at all though is one of the greatest pressures that the dying feel.

If it were the case that all people had access to the finest palliative care at the end of their lives and were all surrounded by those who had their best interests at heart in institutions where there is no financial pressure on managers and medics then I might be able to get to a position where I might support the assisted dying proposals.

However, we don’t live or die in that world. And until then, the best way to assist people to die is by investing in those studying pain management, better funding hospitals and hospices and by listening to the stories of those who sit alongside those who are dying.

I’ve sat in those rooms many times.

All of us should be in the presence of those who love and care for us when we die. Not all of us will be. The law, as it stands, is the best way to protect the interests of all of us when we die. For these reasons, I hope that our parliamentarians have the courage to vote no when the final vote is taken on this bill. It is legislation that would fundamentally change the relationship between the individual and the state.

The principle of alleviating pain is a godly one but the reality is that the devil is in all manner of practical detail.

Assisted dying, euthanasia, scottish parliament

5 responses to “The Affirmation of a Transgender Person”

Jean Mayland

28/07/2015

That is very good. I hope it will be used in England

Reply
Andrew Amanda Leigh-Bullard

29/07/2015

I want to thank you for sharing this. I recently testified at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church on the importance of including a name change rite during the revisions of the Book of Occasional Services. I’m glad to see that other places in the Anglican Communion are looking at ways to celebrate these highly spiritual moments of transformation. This service is beautiful and I hope it will see a lot of use.

There are a couple of things I’d like to point out as a genderqueer Christian. While often toted as the example of “inclusive” language, the phrase of “his/her” is gender exclusive. It creates the expectation that the people using the service will fit into a “female” or a “male” box. This leaves out those who use other pronouns (ex. they, ze, em, etc.). When there is a cultural expectation of exclusion seeing binary phrasing often leads those of us who are genderqueer, bigender, gender fluid and many other identities feeling like we need to ask “does this apply to us?” and “can you change the wording so I can participate in this?”, which is a terrifying experience.

The focused narrative of transition from one gender to another is also problematic for me as well. While many transgender individuals do transition (socially, medically, or legally) others may feel pressured to transition but be unable to do so or may not wish to transition at all. Due to a lack of information, I transitioned from female to male before I learned that I could be transgender without checking every box of the predominant trans narrative. This meant that to fully claim my identity I later went through a second transition, from male to bigender when I realized that even the less discussed aspects of my existence were just as real and valid as those whose story matches the mainstream narrative. Even now I wouldn’t say my transition is “complete” and I certainly haven’t reached the “other” gender. Having lived as a woman, a man, and both at once I can testify things aren’t as opposite as they may appear.

I’d like to delve a bit deeper into what it means for me to be both female and male using the language that first taught me I could exist. I first learned about the richness of my gender as I listed to faithful priests describe the mystery of the Incarnation with reverence and awe. As they spoke with wonder about the God who sent Jesus to us, fully divine and fully human, I met a creator of boundless potential. In that meeting I found silence to hear how my different experiences of gender fit together. Raised a girl, who grew into a man, who then found femininity rising and began to say Compline in a dress at home, while being terrified that they would be discovered as not being “trans enough”. In Christ the pieces fit, as he could never be less than 100% divine nor less than 100% human, so I had been given the gift of being 100% a man and 100% a woman.

Because my queer gender is so firmly rooted in the language and experience of faith I feel especially drawn to ensuring our churches are open and ready to see the spiritual gifts of all trans people, not only those who fit cultural expectations for men & women.

Thank you for your witness. I offer these stories and comments to further the conversation. It means a lot to me to see priests promoting trans affirming spaces across the globe.

Reply
1. Phil Gardner
  
  05/06/2017
  
  I think ‘his/her’ should have been in italics: it’s meant to be a placeholder for whatever pronoun is appropriate for the person being baptized, and isn’t intended to exclude people of non-binary gender. I agree it’s not ideal, but unfortunately we don’t have a word that means ‘any appropriate gender pronoun’. In this case the text could read “Renew N’s life in Christ” and leave it to the president to use either the name or the appropriate pronoun.
  
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Rev. M. Rodrigues

30/07/2015

As a transgender priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, I am simply delighted to see this liturgy. I hope we can do something similar here before too long. Any other information about trans liturgies from any one/anywhere would be really welcome. And I do agree with Andrew’s insightful comments, thanks.
M.

Reply
1. Kimberly
  
  04/06/2017
  
  The point, though, is that this is not specifically a trans liturgy. It’s a liturgy for all the baptised. It assumes that our primary identity is in Christ, and our differences are held creatively together as we share in communion and are held in the body of Christ. It’s affirming because it says ‘this is a step on the journey. You already and eternally belong.’
  
  Reply