Reform Beit Din head welcomes assisted dying vote

Rabbi Jonathan Romain MBE, head of the Reform Beit Din, has lauded the passing of the Assisted Dying Bill last week by MPs as a vote for “compassion and hope”.

The proposed legislation, which MPs in the House of Commons voted in favour of last Friday by 330 to 275, would support terminally ill adults with a life expectancy of six months or less to end their own lives.

Before it can become enshrined into law, the bill must still go to the committee stage in a few months’ time, where it will be scrutinised and amended, before reaching Royal Ascent and further votes in both the House of Commons and House of Lords.

As one of the country’s leading proponents of the cause, Romain is the chair of Dignity in Dying, having established the campaign’s Religious Alliance in 2014. 

He told the JC the bill’s passing would be welcomed by “many” people of faith including a “substantial” number of Jews who feel that “unlike many of the religious hierarchy, it is a profoundly religious response to allow terminally ill patients suffering in pain to let go gently if they so wish”.

“We all want as good a life as possible, so why should we not have as good a death as possible?” he said.

He claimed the safeguarding concerns raised by some – that vulnerable, terminally ill people may choose to take their own lives if they feel like a burden or would rather pass money on to their children than pay for care – will, in time, prove “sincere but unfounded” since, according to him, the same system being proposed in the bill has been working “successfully” for the last 27 years in the state of Oregon.

“This is not a leap into the unknown,” he said, but instead, based “on well-monitored medical procedure for over a quarter of a century. What’s more, it works hand-in-hand with palliative care, which is equally important and also needs to be supported.”

Romain added: “For those facing a ghastly death and for those who are fine now but who may be suffering badly in the future, Friday’s decision by MPs in favour of assisted dying was a vote for compassion and a vote for hope.”

The potential legalisation of assisted dying has, for several weeks, sparked a debate in wider society and within the Jewish community about its legal and moral implications.

Arguing against the bill before the vote, Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said the law, despite being “rooted” in compassion and empathy, would have the “unintended consequence of creating at least as much anguish as it alleviates. The burden it would place on our most vulnerable patients, on their families and on medical staff, as well as the profound effect on the conscience of those left behind, is surely too high a price to pay.”

Masorti Judaism Senior Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg and Senior Rabbi of the S&P Sephardi Community Joseph Dweck joined the chief rabbi in adding their signatures to a letter penned by leaders of multiple faiths last week, which expressed concern over the impact of the bill on the most vulnerable.

Progressive Judaism’s co-leaders, Rabbis Charley Baginsky and Josh Levy, decided against taking a stand on the bill in view of the diversity of opinion within their movements’ ranks.

A number of Jewish organisations which work in medical or palliative care told the JC the bill would likely impact certain ways in which they operated or the guidance they provided, but declined to comment how until the amendments stage.

Jenny Pattinson, CEO of Nightingale Hammerson, which runs two care homes for the Jewish community, said the charity would spend the time it took the bill to get through the parliamentary process to “understand [its] impact on care providers and how we respond in line with our philosophy of putting the resident at the heart of all that we do”.​