UK poised to legalise assisted dying
The British House of Commons is debating a bill that would facilitate assisted dying. Under the draft law, terminally ill adults with six months or less to live who express the wish to die would be able to receive medical assistance once this has been confirmed by two doctors and a court. The parliamentary groups did not instruct MPs on how to vote, but Keir Starmer's Labour government supports the initiative. A similar bill was rejected by Parliament in 2015.
Not for the weak
Legalising assisted dying would put the vulnerable under pressure, argues The Spectator:
“It will introduce into our relations with each other a new element, which is that dying before our time would be an option where once it wasn't. Altruistic dying, meritorious suicide for the sake of the grandchildren (school-fee provision), guilt dying, for fear of being a burden, simple lassitude and depression dying; these are all things that were once unthinkable and might now be a possibility. The relationship between doctors and patients would change forever, just as it has done in the Netherlands since the introduction of assisted dying. This bill is for the strong minded, not for the poor souls in rubbish care homes or with relations who aren't supportive.”
In keeping with the times
The proposed reform of the assisted dying law will boost protection rather than weakening it, The Times counters:
“We already have an assisted dying law, just not a very good one. You already can get the assistance of a relative or friend to help you die. The risk that someone will pressure a relative to die already exists, even if, provided such behaviour were discovered, it would attract legal sanction. What is being proposed is thus not a vast new law. It is a proportionate reform of existing practice. ... The safeguards against malicious relatives - of doctors and courts - are put in place before you actually die. ... That is the safer option.”
Don't make death a torment
The agonising death that his father had to endure turned journalist Alan Rusbridger into a proponent of assisted dying, he explains in The Independent:
“He was 96, a good innings. And as the end neared he politely told the doctors and nurses attending him that they had better things to do than try to prolong his life. He wanted to die, and ... they wouldn't let him. Our last precious time together was clouded by his growing pain and sense of betrayal: as he became more confused he blamed me and my brother for our failure to persuade the doctors to carry out his wishes. Instead of tranquillity, there was bitterness, bewilderment – and agony. 'They wouldn't treat an animal like this,' he groaned many times. And he was right.”