We must take this opportunity to give dying people like my mum the right to choose how and when they die
IT is the emotive issue that is dividing the nation – should terminally ill adults be allowed to ask others to help them take their own lives?
On Friday, parliament will vote on new legislation that could allow those with six months or less to live to legally do just that.
Introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, the Terminally Ill Adults (End Of Life) Bill has been met with furious debate on both sides of the argument.
Supporters say it offers dignity to those who are, or will be, suffering, allowing them to choose the timing of their death.
Opponents say it will cause unnecessary strain on people in their most vulnerable moments, and could see some choose death to avoid becoming a burden to their family.
Numerous question marks remain over exactly how the bill will be implemented, not least who will carry out the act – the struggling NHS or the private sector?
Here two writers give their very personal views . . .
YES
Says Mandy Appleyard
DIGNITY. Independence. Quality of life. Control. When my formerly fit mum had a severe stroke one morning at the bus stop, all these valued aspects of her life were snatched away from her.
Suddenly, at the age of 81, she was totally dependent on other people — including for what she saw as the brutal indignities of personal care.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and from the day she woke in hospital in May 2019 to the grim new reality of paralysis and crushing disability, she communicated to my sister and me that she wanted to die, by miming putting a gun to her head.
All the things Janet Appleyard loved to do — dancing, cooking, gardening, walking on the beach — were off-limits. Confined to a wheelchair, Mum asked us, unwaveringly over two years, to take her to Dignitas.
We tried to change her mind, hoping she would rediscover some joy. She didn’t. Without hope for her future and in permanent pain, she wanted to die.
So, in a sun-filled room at Dignitas in February 2021, with my sister and me at her side, Mum drank a dose of barbiturate and passed away.
Her suffering was over and she had achieved the dignified, peaceful and self-determined death she wanted — one of nearly 600 Britons to do so at Dignitas since it opened in 1998.
Instead of being able to die peacefully at home in Yorkshire, Mum had to make the expensive and painful journey to a foreign country.
On our return from Zurich, I was under police investigation for almost two years for assisting my mum’s suicide — a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment.
While I hope Friday’s vote will mean assisted dying becomes legal — a choice for those who want it, an irrelevance to those who don’t — for Mum and many like her, the Private Members’ Bill is too narrow in its remit.
My mum wasn’t terminally ill nor within six months of end of life, so this law would not apply to her — or to the millions of other stroke survivors or people with degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease and dementia.
But at least it would be a step in the right direction. People have legal access to assisted dying in countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada the Netherlands, Spain, New Zealand and some US states. Why has Britain lagged so far behind?
How can any civilised and compassionate society continue to deny them that?
Mandy Appleyard
Especially when 84 per cent of Brits support the choice of assisted dying for terminally ill adults — and that includes the majority of religious and disabled people.
This is an opportunity to give dying people the much-deserved right to choose how and when they die.
How can any civilised and compassionate society continue to deny them that?
NO
Says Leo McKinstry
IN the long history of Britain, the only previous state-sanctioned executioners were hangmen with their nooses and beheaders with their axes.
Now if this measure is passed, the Government will have to create a new cadre of medical professionals who have a licence to kill.
It is an alarming prospect, made all the more depressing by the certainty or what will happen once the death service is established.
There will soon be complaints about “lack of resources” and the need for more “diversity” among the users and practitioners, while the new organisation will be awash with managers, communications officers and outreach workers.
Soon waiting lists will start to build, leading to complaints from relatives that their loved one died before the state had the chance to carry out its duties.
Inevitably there will be scandals, as greedy families seek an early path to their inheritances and a new breed of lethal sadists, following the trail first blazed by Dr Harold Shipman, exploit the opportunities to enact their dark urges.
Even without descending to such extremes, the pro-death climate will result in many elderly and ill people feeling that they are a burden to either the state or their families.
During the Covid pandemic, the public was constantly told their first duty was to “save the NHS”.
In a culture where assisted dying is supported by the state, there will be an explosion in voluntary euthansisa.
The pro-dying brigade talk about robust safeguards to prevent abuses, including a requirement that approval must be given by two doctors. But that is no safety net at all.
Two doctors are required to sanction any abortion under the 1967 Act, but it is now nothing more than a box-ticking exercise.
Kim Leadbeater declares that her Bill will apply only to the terminally ill, but it is notoriously difficult with some conditions to judge how long a patient may have to live.
There is nothing liberating about assisted death
Leo McKinstry
Moreover, Ms Leadbeater’s stipulation excluded many patients who might not be terminally ill but may want to end their lives because they are in severe pain or despair.
Humans should have autonomy over their own lives.
We already have the choice if we want to end it all.
We do not need to contract out the decision or pathetically seek permission from the state. There is nothing liberating about assisted death.
On the contrary, it is a step that limits our freedom and enhances the state’s power.