MPs must step back from brink and stop assisted suicide – it’s deeply worrying and here’s why
MPs will tomorrow debate a public petition to legalise assisted suicide.
Outside in Parliament Square will be a crowd of activists with hard-hitting placards calling on MPs to “end suffering” and to give people “choice”.
The media will film their demonstration and report the debate as another step towards what campaigners cleverly call “the last right”.
But over in a corner of the square will be a smaller, less noisy group.
Doctors and their patients — disabled people and the elderly — will gather to show that there is another side to this debate, another possible future than the “inevitable” decision to legalise euthanasia.
We can all understand why patients, and their families, fearing agony at the end of their lives, would want the reassurance that, if it gets too much, there is a way out.
The problem is that you cannot write a law that will not be bent, abused or simply expanded over time.
Campaigners say that to qualify for a lethal injection or a cocktail of drugs, you would need a doctor to confirm you only have six months to live, and that you are taking the decision in your right mind.
But it is notoriously difficult to predict the time people have left to live. And how do we decide that someone genuinely wants to die?
Doctors often report patients, especially after a bad diagnosis, expressing the wish to “end it all”, but who go on to live happily for years.
People change their minds. That’s why most doctors who work with the elderly do not support a change in the law.
And, in fact, most people who take the time to understand assisted suicide oppose it, too.
If you say people have a “right” to ask the state to kill them, that right should be available for everyone.
Why not people with chronic illnesses, including mental illnesses, which can be as awful for the patient as a bad death — and a lot longer lasting?
Deeply worrying
In every country where assisted suicide is legal, the rules on who is eligible for it have widened.
It always starts with campaigners arguing it is needed for a small number of people, at the very end of their lives, to avoid an agonising death.
But it always becomes a new option for a growing group of people. In Canada, where Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) was legalised in 2016, originally only those who were terminally ill were eligible for the procedure.
But now activists are lobbying to extend euthanasia laws to people suffering from a mental illness.
By 2027, people suffering from addiction and depression and even learning difficulties could be offered assisted dying. This is deeply worrying.
In the Netherlands and Belgium they give euthanasia to children, and there are even calls to kill people who are “tired of life”.
Even in places where the rules have remained relatively tight, like in Oregon, where campaigners always point to, it is easy to find a doctor who will agree you qualify.
There are even reports of doctors in the US helping patients with anorexia get assisted dying.
Why do most people who choose assisted suicide, in the countries where it is legal, do so?
Research from Oregon’s 2021 report on assisted dying found that more than half (54 per cent) of people chose euthanasia, not the fear of a painful death.
It is because they feel they are a burden on their family or on society.
That’s a terribly sad fact. It also shows why we need to be so careful about giving people this “choice”.
Because when the option is there to take a financial burden off your loved ones, or the NHS for that matter, many people will feel obliged to take it.
Every elderly person will sooner or later feel they have to have “the conversation” with their family: How long shall I go on living, costing you money and time and emotional energy?
You can see how this plays out. What began as a choice becomes a duty.
The whole point of the NHS was to create a system of national healthcare that helped people live longer and healthier lives.
Now we are looking at the perverse idea that the NHS could be used to actively cut life short.
Of course, that’s exactly what some campaigners, like Matthew Parris, say in favour of the policy.
They want old people to end their lives in order to save money for the taxpayer, to free up houses, to get wealth flowing down the generations.
Duty on the NHS
And if you only thought about human beings as if they were units of economic value — positive or negative — that is what you would think too.
But we are not. We are vulnerable, valuable, and we are made for dependence on others.
There should not be any shame about being a burden.
We needed other people to look after us when we were very young, and we need it when we are old.
Our ambition as a society should be to ensure that everyone grows old without fear, with a guarantee of good care at the end.
That is the goal campaigners should be aiming at, not state-assisted suicide.
The recent Health and Social Care Act places a duty on the NHS to fund palliative care — the medical assistance people need to end their lives as comfortably and painlessly as possible.
This is possible. In recent years we have made huge strides in the science of pain management.
And it should no longer be necessary for anyone to die in unbearable physical agony. The campaigners say they are doing this on behalf of people who want to die.
Who am I, or anyone else, to say they should not have choice over whether they live or die? The answer is simple. We try to stop people from committing suicide.
We do not respect the choice to end your life, even if we understand it, even if we can imagine wanting to die ourselves.
If someone is standing on a window ledge threatening to jump, we do not respect their freedom, let alone offer to give them a push. We grab them back into the room.
Before it is too late, we need to stop Parliament jumping over the edge.
ESTHER: A CRUCIAL MOMENT
TOMORROW’S assisted dying debate – the first in almost two years – comes after a petition backed by Dame Esther Rantzen and Dignity In Dying secured more than 200,000 signatures.
Dame Esther has been fighting for a change in the law after revealing she is considering travelling to Switzerland for an assisted death.
The 83-year-old presenter is too unwell to attend the debate at Westminster Hall tomorrow afternoon after being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
But she said MPs will be looking into a topic “crucial to most constituents up and down the country”.
She has previously said: “Let us hope this time the voice of the people is heard, and politicians recognise it is time for a compassionate change to a cruel, outdated law.”