The issue of assisted dying is in the news on both sides of the border this week. Yesterday, Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill received its first reading in the House of Lords. This is a formality and the date for a full debate on the issue has not yet been set.
To mark the occasion, the Dignity in Dying campaign has released a very powerful video which highlights the choices we are free to make in life, but we can’t choose the manner of our death.
Dignity in Dying is asking people to email the three main party leaders to express their support for Lord Falconer’s Bill, a measure they say 80% of the public support.
In Scotland, there is an Assisted Suicide Bill going through Holyrood. It was initially introduced by Margo MacDonald, the iconic independent MSP who died in April.but is now being taken forward by Green MSP Patrick Harvie.
The My Life My Death My Choice campaign has asked those who support the Bill to email the members of the Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee. The deadline for doing that is today so if this is an important issue to you, don’t miss your chance.
This is obviously a very emotive subject. There are strong views on both sides and it’s one of these issues where application of liberal principles can lead you to either.
At the Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference in Aberdeen this March, My Life, My Death, My Choice ran a fringe meeting which was a bit of a gold standard for how this issue should be debated, with great respect being shown for opposing feelings by both sides. The person speaking against the Bill was the Rev Scott Rennie who went out of his way to show understanding to those who supported it. He said a good death was important, but we must be very careful in making decisions about dispensing with something as precious as life. He was worried that people might be concerned that they would be a burden on relatives. You can see my tweets from this meeting and some photos towards the end of this Storify thingy.
My own view was borne out of seeing someone I loved suffer horribly at a very young age. That person asked several times for help to end her life, help that we chose not to give. I wish she had had the choice to make her own decision and to explain it to us. Actually, I’m not sure that she would have chosen to go through with an assisted suicide, but it feels right to me that the choice should have been hers to make. My concerns would be that we would need to be assured of future investment in palliative care. The passing of this legislation would have to be accompanied by much greater knowledge and understanding of all the options available and also some sort of guarantee that good quality hospice style care would be available to all. There would also have to be safeguards. The Scottish Bill requires three separate requests to be made before a prescription can be issued, and that prescription must be used within two weeks or it expires. The English Bill requires the person to make a witnessed declaration of intent which is countersigned by two doctors who has examined them separately, and stating that they have the capacity to do so and are satisfied that the decision is voluntary.
Whatever happens to these bills, I think it’s very important that we as a society become more open about discussing issues around death so that we can learn from others and be more aware of what people go through. That can only help more people die well, however they choose to do so.
What is your view on these Bills? Has the time come to follow places like Oregon and put in place a law that enables people to choose the time of their death?
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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14 Comments
Caron Lindsay
Thanks for your article, which mainly advocates the position of the pro-assisted suicide lobby. This issue is highly emotive and I think it is very important from the outset to underline your point that Liberal Democrats can apply Liberalism on which ever side of the debate they stand.
There is a danger we go down the line of trading emotional stories and cases of how relatives ended their lives as a way of shoring up an argument and of showing just how harrowing and/or gentle the ending was. This is actually not helpful in teasing out the core issues.
It may well be that as a society we do not discuss these issues, maybe that’s why, like Capital Punishment, polls show assisted suicide is favoured. However, the last thing politicians should do is follow the latest set of opinion polls and fail to check the kind of questions asked, to reach the % answer.
The video highlights the question of choice in ‘methods’ of dying. The word ‘choice’ is used by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (now re-branded as ‘Dignity in Dying’) to suggest that a. somehow people who make a choice whether to commit suicide make a ‘free choice.’ b. that committing suicide is an individual good if that person chooses it, it has no noticeable effect on the culture and members of wider society.
a. Is someone who has been diagnosed as terminally ill really going to be able to make a totally free choice? How do we know that vulnerable people are not being put under subtle pressure to end their lives? How do we know that such a person is not depressed, as depression is often hard to diagnose. Presumably, the doctors making the decision will have volunteered to be involved in the potential suicide, this overturning the Hippocratic Oath. Will they know which relatives have placed subtle pressure on the terminally ill patient?
Those opposed to this kind of ‘care’ would dissent from involvement on conscience grounds. So the assumption will more often decide in favour – we know this to be the way things have gone in countries where assisted suicide has taken hold- Holland, Belgium, and Oregon.
b. We know that there has been a massive increase in the number of assisted suicides in countries that allow it. The culture changes – it becomes ‘normalised’. This lessens the force of the principle of free choice when assisted dying becomes ‘every day’. In Belgium, the acceleration of numbers of assisted suicides has normalised the idea so much that now children under twelve are allowed to commit suicide (with their parents’ consent.) Is a child any more than a frail elderly person who wants to be free from pain, who may well be depressed, in a position to give informed consent?
In the case of assisted suicide, there is the great danger that some if not most terminally people will choose to kill themselves for fear of being a burden – just at the time when most kindness, compassion and care in needed.
For me, the law of the land is there to protect the vulnerable, not help a small number of exceptionally strong-minded people who right now feel in full mastery of their circumstances, to exercise and make acceptable what is a false choice.
Many of the choices we make in life are in some sense reversible. We choose to holiday in Wales, but we could change our mind before going, or we could pull out after arriving if the weather’s awful. We choose to view BBC1 but can switch to ITV anytime, and switch back.
Choosing to die doesn’t have this reversible feature, because once you’re gone you’re gone. So maybe framing the argument in terms of choice isn’t really appropriate.
Just for balance, I am providing a link to a letter written to the Telegraph against the Falconer Bill from ‘Not Dead Yet’, the disability rights alliance.
This alliance for disabled people is implacably opposed to Assisted Suicide and Voluntary Euthanasia. There is a link to a national petition against the Falconer Bill (the same Lord Falconer who was the main cheerleader for and defender of his friend Tony Blair’s war in Iraq):
http://www.carenotkilling.org.uk/letters/disabled-leaders-speak-out/
Caron – Yes we should have a debate on this. But there is party policy here and it is very clear. Lib Dem’s support a change in the law. I hope the party will not shy away from advocating this democratically made policy simply on the grounds that this is an ‘issue of conscience’. Many people feel many things are matter of conscience (personally Secret Courts springs to mind), but sometimes we have to make decisions together on these issues. Liberal Democrats have done this twice, and both times and vote was to support this change. As a party let us back this change, whilst continuing to support and uphold those who disagree with us on this.
Helen – Not Dead Yet is not a ‘disability rights alliance’, it is a pro-life organisation for disabled people. That is fine and I have no problem with disabled people forming a pro-life organisation for themselves, but their are many for whom the right to end a life of unbearable suffering is something they want for themselves because they are disabled. I have conditions that mean I could join Not Dead yet if I so wished, but actually I think that society has for far too long felt empowered to tell disabled people what we can and cannot do with our own lives and that this should be end in relation to end of life issues just as it should with issues of birth, sex, work, education and everything else. I may or may not be in a minority of disabled people on this issue, but I think it is wrong to equate pro life with disability rights.
PS: The tags on this topic are a bit of a mess with both ‘assisted dying’ and ‘assisted suicide’ being used somewhat arbitrarily (and this article is tagged under neither. It may interest some to read other contributions on LDV through the years.
On the side of a change in the law we have
Chris Davies – https://www.libdemvoice.org/chris-davies-mep-writes-assisted-dying-is-a-liberal-issue-26452.html
Eriv Avbury – https://www.libdemvoice.org/eric-avebury-writes-assisted-dying-32650.html
Myself – https://www.libdemvoice.org/3-facts-about-assisted-dying-or-its-not-all-about-switzerland-you-know-32854.html
On the side of the status quo (or something like it) we have
Alex Carlile (who doesn’t seem to like me) – https://www.libdemvoice.org/lord-carlile-writesexamining-the-evidence-on-assisted-suicide-33105.html
Tahir Maher – https://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-choose-life-34856.html
Anthony Lester has also written on the tengential issue of whether and when people should be prosecuted for helping relatives travel abroad to recieve assistance to end their lives https://www.libdemvoice.org/commentislinkedldv-anthony-lester-end-the-legal-uncertainty-over-assisted-suicide-15570.html
I think Simon Beard’s comment is very important and I also think it is disingenuous of Helen Tedcastle to start off as if offering reasoned argument only to reveal at the very end (with her web link) that she is a committed campaigner for life at any cost. That is her right, but she should be up front about it.
@Michael. Why should Helen be “upfront”? Being a committed campaigner doesn’t affect the strength or weakness of an argument.
If you don’t want to terminate your life for whatever reason, fine, don’t do it., but please don’t be so rude as to decide what I can and cannot do with my life.
“Why should Helen be “upfront”? Being a committed campaigner doesn’t affect the strength or weakness of an argument.”
If it’s another case of beliefs essentially arising out of religious faith being imposed on those who don’t share that faith, then it’s highly relevant to know the background.
@Graham Martin-Royle
This isn’t about what you can and cannot do with your life. It’s about what other people can do with your life.
@Chris
Whatever the background of belief may be, it doesn’t affect the strength or weakness of an argument. Therefore it’s not relevant to deciding whether to accept the argument or not.
“Whatever the background of belief may be, it doesn’t affect the strength or weakness of an argument. Therefore it’s not relevant to deciding whether to accept the argument or not.”
Of course it is – in just the same way that it’s relevant to know who is paying poitical lobbyists to push a particular line.
Simon Beard.
Not Dead Yet fights for the rights of disabled people. One of those rights is the right to life and the right not to live a life in a climate of expectation of euthanasia or assisted suicide. The latter for them, is the start of a slippery slope and will lead in their view to a cultural shift in attitudes towards those at the end of life. As many disabled people are life limited, this is a real cause for concern.
Disabled people have been the victims in the past of sterilisation programmes, euthanasia programmes and so on, so I am not surprised that Not Dead Yet is implacably opposed to the Falconer Bill.
I am not a member of Not Dead Yet by the way but I am sympathetic to their case.
@ Michael Berridge – what is disingenuous about offering a reasoned argument and then offering balance to Caron’s article by providing a link to an anti-assisted suicide website? Perhaps you should complain about the article which is clearly biased in one direction.
@ Chris: If you read my comments carefully, I have not once referred to faith and therefore, how one can be accused of imposing faith on someone else is absurd and without foundation. Please engage on my actual comment.
Graham Martin-Royle
” If you don’t want to terminate your life for whatever reason, fine, don’t do it., but please don’t be so rude as to decide what I can and cannot do with my life.”
The problem for me with an argument like this is that it assumes that each person is entirely autonomous to the point where an individual’s action and will has no measurable effect on anyone else. It also assumes that sickness, dying and death is an entirely personal matter. However, in my view, no one is an island, sufficient to themselves either in daily life or at the end of life.
Whereas there is a considerable personal element to dying and death it is in fact something we all share. It is something which effects every family, every hospital, hospice and care home. So if the law changes to allow a doctor to prescribe enough drugs for a person to kill themselves, this changes the remit of a doctor and changes their role from saving life to assisting an intentional death. This becomes not a personal matter or family matter but a social matter.
It also opens doctors up to a minefield of ethical and legal challenges should safeguards be bent – which we know they will from other jurisdictions.
From here it is a potentially short step to Voluntary Euthanasia, the ultimate goal of the re-branded ‘Dignity in Dying’ formally Voluntary Euthanasia Society.
It is not surprising that the BMA is opposed to the Falconer Bill.