Public ethical issues

One of our aims is to promote humanist views on public ethical issues. We focus on those issues that are either important to humanists in particular or have high social importance, especially where others are actively promoting views opposed to humanist values or the humanist voice is excluded or weak.

Humanists have always been at the forefront of promoting a rational, secular approach to ethical issues in public policy. We are focused on developing and promoting expert and nuanced critique of issues including abortion and assisted dying, and on emerging contemporary issues, such as the state funding of homeopathy and the shortage of organs available for donation.

In depth

Humanists form their views on the often-conflicting ideas and unpredictable consequences arising from, for example, new developments in medical science, using reason, evidence and compassion and putting human wellbeing and the wellbeing of other sentient animals at the centre of their thinking. We base our responses on the humanist principle that individuals should have the right to live by their own personal values and the freedom to make decisions about their own lives, as long as these do not result in harm to others or to the general aim of minimising suffering and advancing human happiness.

We do recognise that some values are not shared by everyone. Humanists do not share the attitudes to ‘interfering with nature’ or ‘playing God’ or the same definitions of personhood held by some religious believers. We respect the right not to participate in some procedures of those holding religious beliefs about the sanctity of life and the limits of medical intervention. Equally, we deny them the right to impose their beliefs directly or indirectly on others.

With that said, in practice we work on the following ethical issues:

There are a number of other campaigns we work on that are ethical in nature but that we classify as falling elsewhere in our campaigns work, for instance our work around same-sex and humanist marriage and on conscientious objection.

What we’re doing

  • We are taking a legal challenge with our member Paul Lamb on the illegality of assisted dying in the UK.
  • In 2019, MPs and peers voted in favour of amendments to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Act, which compels the UK Government to make regulations for abortion reform in Northern Ireland if the Northern Ireland Assembly fails to reform by 21 October 2019. We lobbied parliamentarians in support of this, with many members of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group speaking and voting in favour. We are now working in support of implementation of the new legislation.
  • We helped shape the new opt-out system of organ donation in Wales and England giving oral evidence to the Welsh Assembly Government Committee Inquiry and the Department for Health and Social Care.
  • We a founding member of the Anti-FGM Network, a coalition of UK based organisations that are working to end FGM and other harmful ‘traditional’ practices that undermine the bodily integrity or mental well-being of women and girls.
  • We have campaigned in favour of the ending of NHS-funding for homeopathy. In 2017, NHS England recommended that homeopathic treatments should be added to the ‘blacklist’ of therapies not provided by the NHS and in 2018 all NHS Trusts in England cease providing routine funding for homeopathy.

We have also worked, on a more ad hoc basis, on a number of other ethical issues in recent years – for instance, the reburial of historic human remains and on forced marriage. We are also a member of a number of campaigns that are ethical in nature, such as the Climate Coalition and End Child Poverty. Campaigning in these areas is generally taken forward by Humanists UK-affiliated group Humanists for a Better World.

Get involved

Humanists UK consults with its members on scientific and ethical issues. We welcome your comments on these subjects, which help us to form our policy and campaigns.

You can also research and take up one of these issues with your MP and/or local authority, or write to a newspaper. Our Take Action Toolkit has advice on how to go about this.

If there is anything in these pages that you need more information or advice on, please contact our Campaigns Team.

You can also support Humanists UK by becoming a member. That helps in itself, and you can help even more by supporting our campaigns in the ways suggested above. But campaigns also cost money – quite a lot of money – and we also need financial support. You can make a donation to Humanists UK.