Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill was submitted for its first reading within a few days (26 July) of the General Election. The Bill says it is to
'Allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards, to be assisted to end their own life; and for connected purposes.'
If passed it will for the first time here legalise the deliberate killing of innocent adults. The 'safeguards' are vital.
Yet as a Private Member's Bill this complex issue would conventionally receive only five hours' debate on its second reading. Asking for more time Sir David Davis said at PMQs on 9 October:
'If we get this wrong first time, the consequences are too terrible to contemplate. In 1967, the Government of the day gave time to allow David Steel's Abortion Bill to go through.
But did the Abortion Bill 'get it right'? At the time it was anticipated that the number of permitted abortions would be in the region of 10,000 - 12,000 per year. Yet in 2022 the actual figure for England and Wales was 20 times the upper prediction, even though the population had increased by less than one-third over that time. Over 10 million unborn children have been killed in Great Britain since 1967. In effect, and with few exceptions, we have abortion on demand, so easy is it to satisfy the vaguely-worded legal stipulations.
Let's see the safeguards built into Lord Falconer's Bill (linked above, first line):
- The patient must be over 18, sane, expected to die within six months from a terminal and irreversible illness. Mental illness and disability are excluded as reasons to terminate.
- They must clearly understand what they are doing and their decision must be 'settled' and have been reached 'without undue influence, coercion or duress.'
- They must sign a declaration to that effect, witnessed by someone who is not a relation, has not been involved in their care, and has nothing to gain from the subject's death; and countersigned by two doctors, the medical attendant plus another, who not connected to each other and neither of whom stands to gain from the procedure. The doctors must be able to communicate with the patient, if necessary via an interpreter.
- The patient's Declaration must affirm that 'the Attending Doctor and Independent Doctor… have each fully informed [them] about [the patient's] diagnosis and prognosis and the treatments available to [them], including pain control and palliative care.' The countersigners must also affirm that they have discussed hospice care with the patient.
- The patient must have the right to change their mind at any stage up to the last moment, not necessarily in writing.
Put like that, who could possibly object?
And surely that is the point. If you wish to break a taboo, bore a very small and well-defined hole in it. The bigger augers and crowbars can come later. Then, as with abortion, the trickle of assisted-suicide cases may become a flood, as has been happening in other countries.
Look again at the stipulations and see how one or more might be modified or abandoned in time and in practice, perhaps in the light of legal precedent. For example, the High Court recently allowed a husband to inherit his late wife's estate after he had helped his wife to die.
As to method, the Bill assumes that the patient will end their life using one or more drugs but past experience shows that a medicated death is not always swift and painless.
We can easily sympathise with the desire of some people to shorten their suffering. As we have seen, precautions are included in the Bill that protect the patient from pressure by people with ulterior motives, so it would seem that it is solely a matter of individual free choice.
But society in general may also have an interest. Caring for a terminally ill person may cost the NHS tens of thousands of pounds one way and another. Also, many pensioners are living, often alone, in dwellings that are bigger than they need, objectively speaking. So it must be tempting to suggest that not only the sick but the old and poor are simply a burden to the rest of us. As Ebenezer Scrooge says, 'If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.'
But it is not only the miserly rich that adopt that attitude. Here is George Bernard Shaw, famous writer and socialist, speaking in 1931:
'I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board just as he might come before the income tax commissioners and say every 5 years or every 7 years, just put them there, and say, sir or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can't justify your existence; if you're not pulling your weight in the social boat; if you are not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can't be of very much use to yourself.'
How rational; as was the Eugenics Society's plan to sterilise those unfit for parenthood. That would quickly rebalance the national finances, would it not?
Once you believe that life is not sacred, we are off down that path. It is only a matter of time.