Written by In a momentous decision, MPs have voted in favour of assisted suicide
Friday 29 November 2024
It could be years before the first dose of poison is taken by a patient deemed terminally ill, but following the decision by a majority of MPs to vote in favour of assisted suicide on Friday something in Britain has already changed. The Rubicon has been crossed. The principle of the sanctity of human life, the central moral premise of this society, is no more. It was done away with after a few hours of debate before a free vote in the House of Commons on a private member’s bill that is misconceived and lacking essential detail. A state that has since the abolition of capital punishment in 1965 denied itself the right to take life is set to revive that power. This time its agents will be not hangmen but doctors, schooled in lethal drugs.
However, given the need by proponents of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to persuade doubters, the proposed law says that doctors will not directly administer poison (for that is what it is, medication being a curative substance). Instead, the person wanting to commit suicide (again, that is what it is) must self-administer the fatal dose. That technicality matters not: by facilitating a suicide the state will again become a killer.
These are the bald facts and no amount of euphemism — and there has been plenty deployed in the campaign to force the bill through — changes them. There are those, seemingly a minority in this country, who oppose assisting the terminally ill to kill themselves in any circumstances, be it on religious or philosophical grounds. But even those who believe in the sovereignty of the individual and the right to control the manner of one’s demise should be concerned about the shallowness and rapidity of Friday’s deliberations.
Yes, MPs spoke with passion. But when they voted in favour of the bill at second reading by a margin of 330 to 275 they did so with little understanding of the realities, legal and medical, involved. The bill, introduced by the Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater, includes a series of conditions designed to prevent terminally ill people from being coerced into killing themselves by, for example, greedy relatives. Yet, the effectiveness of her protections is open to serious doubt.
The person wanting to commit suicide must have only six months to live. But while it is relatively easy to identify a person within days of death, forecasts of life expectancy counted in weeks and months are notoriously uncertain. Ms Leadbeater proposes that first one and then a second doctor must confirm the six-month prognosis, and that the patient is of sound mind and free of coercion. A judge will then be needed to ratify the doctors’ findings. So doctors must not only become agents of suicide but detectives, expert in spotting subtle and malignant pressures. Judges, operating at distance, will be largely reliant on these two inexpert opinions.
Oregon, the gold standard for assisted suicide, shows where this can go. Since introducing the practice in 1998 the US state has seen killings rise to 280 a year. Precautionary psychiatric evaluations have dropped from 31 per cent of cases to 1 per cent. Those asking for suicide now commonly cite being a burden as a reason. Over the border in Canada, the state is killing 15,000 people a year.
The Leadbeater bill may still fail due to lack of parliamentary time. If not, it will open up a brave new world, one in which, if overseas experience is a guide, the direction of travel will be one way: towards ever more routine state killing.
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