My Views on the Assisted Suicide Bill

I wish I had the certainty of so many giving their opinion in favour of or opposed to the assisted suicide bill before parliament tomorrow. I have very mixed feelings about it all. I have no objection on principle to assisted suicide in some circumstances – circumstances that are often too horrible to bear – but this proposal is rushed, and both too little and too much. I would vote against.

This proposal is too little, in that it doesn’t cover the two circumstances where the cases for assisted suicide is strongest. One is the situation faced by Tony Nicklinson, a compos mentis adult with a minimal quality of life expressing a persistent wish to die over many years, but physically unable to do so themselves. The second is that faced by many elderly people who, having lost all faculties, often accompanied by a degrading degree of incontinence or severe and constant pain, are locked away on the upper floors of nursing homes, forgotten by everyone, including by themselves.

I doubt there is anyone alive who isn’t opposed to tomorrow’s bill on principle who won’t also support access to assisted suicide in these circumstances. I do. So, if this bill does pass, it will mark the start of a process of steadily widening access to medically-assisted death. That won’t be a bad thing in every case, but I wonder how we’re going to stop before court cases and pro-euthanasia enthusiasts lead into very dangerous territory. We know that some disabled Canadians have been put under pressure to opt for assisted suicide, that Belgium will offer euthanasia to otherwise healthy young adults with chronic depression, that the Netherlands has euthanised dementia patients who seemed to be resisting. This is not a subject on which one should be blind to long-term consequences and the tendency of courts to make legislation more permissive than originally intended over time.

And that’s why it seems so wrong that we are rushing into legislation that has emerged essentially out of nowhere, without the benefit of the dedicated team of civil servants and parliamentary draftsmen and longer consultation that a government-sponsored bill would have. Labour haven’t even been in power for five months yet; there just hasn’t been time to do the job of drafting the bill properly.

The job of approving requests for euthanasia is to be given to a family courts system which is already overloaded. Either euthanasia requests will handled perfunctorily or else other cases – often horrible cases around family breakdown and child custody – will be delayed more than they already are.

Finally, I worry about the wider culture of the pro-euthanasia lobby in the UK. We have seen some really creepy stuff in the last few weeks, from adverts of healthy young adults having dancing with joy at the prospect of assisted suicide through to Matthew Parris gloating about ending useless lives. We shouldn’t allow the principle of medically-assisted death to enter a culture like that until we’re damn sure we have guardrails that will hold against clever and powerful and determined people who seem to see the idea as something to celebrate.

I have no religious objection to euthanasia. I don’t hold to the consistent life ethic. I’m not a pacifist, I support first trimester abortion on demand, and I don’t even necessarily oppose the death penalty in all circumstances (war crimes, genocide). But I don’t support this legislation. Also, assisted suicide has been happening the advent of medicine; there is a broader grey-zone between palliative care and euthanasia than most people seem to acknowledge.

At the same time, I will confess that the more I hear of how euthanasia laws have worked in practice in Canada and the Benelux counties, I am wobbling even on the principle of assisted suicide.

Could I be persuaded by an assisted suicide bill? Probably, but I’d need reassurance the grounds wouldn’t continually expand as in other countries. Am I persuaded by this bill? Absolutely not.