“The Times” opposes Assisted Dying Bill

 It is extraordinary that a fundamental change in the relationship between citizens and the law, with immense implications for public health provision, is being considered with so little forethought.

The torment of many suffering terminal illness can scarcely be imagined. They face not only the imminence of extinction but pain and indignity on the route to it. It remains a brute fact that “assisted dying” is not palliative care: it is assistance to die, rather than assistance in death. Labour MPs appear to be more engaged in fractious dispute than sober consideration of the implications.

The former MP Baroness Hodge, who favours a change in the law, has noted the “highly emotional” state of debate within Labour. Ms Leadbeater has found “quite upsetting” a commonsensical comment by Wes Streeting, the health secretary, that there is a potential slippery slope involved in legislation. Some terminally ill patients may opt for death if they believe it is financially in the ­interests of those they leave behind.

The objections to legalising assisted dying are substantial and are not being given due weight. As Lord Ribeiro, a former president of the Royal College of Surgeons, wrote some years ago, a doctor “who agrees to explore assisted suicide risks sending the message to the patient, however unintentionally, that in his or her circumstances a hastened death might well be, in the doctor’s professional opinion, the best course of action — at least an option worth considering”. And this would radically alter the nature of the doctor-patient relationship.

The language of free choice, invoked by some proponents of Ms Leadbeater’s bill, is inappropriate here. Once the state grants a right of doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill, there is no principled objection to extending it to other categories of patient. This is no mere theoretical objection. There are documented cases in the Netherlands of doctors who have assisted in the suicides of people who are not terminally or even psychiatrically ill, but for whom the burden of living is too great.

MPs have a duty to reflect hard on any proposal for helping vulnerable people take their own lives. This rushed and botched private member’s bill is an inadvertent demonstration of the point.

The Times Leader November 18 2024  £ here