Assisted dying is a cruel betrayal of the vulnerable
The so-called Assisted Dying Bill is an act of war on society’s vulnerable. Only once the blood has been shed will we realise, with horror, its irreversible effects.
Members of Parliament last voted on the matter in 2015, when the Bill was thankfully defeated. Just 117 MPs, including Sir Keir Starmer, voted in favour. His enthusiasm for euthanasia has swept into his premiership. Calls from terminally ill Dame Esther Rantzen to “be given the dignity of choice” prompted Starmer to make a promise to provide time for a vote.
That time has now come. Earlier this month, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater introduced a Bill to parliament that would, if supported, allow people to die, provided they are ill enough and can convince two doctors plus a judge that their life isn’t worth living.
How haunting that life, so precious, so beautiful and so rare, can be signed away at the hands of bureaucrats. How tragically ironic that a government that consistently pledged to “protect working people”, “protect public services”, “protect the most vulnerable” may in fact vote to allow people to kill themselves.
Leadbeater has said her Bill would be “the strongest most robust piece of legislation on this issue in the world”. However when questioned about the possible extension of eligibility criteria in future (for example, to include chronic pain), Leadbeater could make no guarantee, telling the Today programme “I feel very confident that once this Bill is passed, this is where we’ll stay”.
Only time will tell whether her confidence is shared by her colleagues. Since so-called assisted dying was last debated nine years ago, parliament has been flooded with new, young, Labour Members. Our lives – and our deaths – are in their hands.
Wes Streeting dropped a missile into the debate recently, saying in no uncertain terms that the NHS could not fund his colleague’s proposed plans without it coming at the expense of other departments. In other words, in order to fund assisted suicide, we may have to sacrifice other life-improving medical services.
There can be no doubt therefore that if this Bill is passed, the societal, spiritual and political fabric of England and Wales would be irreparably remodelled. We need not look far to witness the reality of societies in which murder is baked into the law.
In Canada, eight years after legalisation, assisted dying accounts for over 4 per cent of deaths annually. Canadian campaign groups are pushing for eligibility to extend to people in “unjust social circumstances”. In the Netherlands, “patients who have a voluntary and well-considered death wish” can request euthanasia and, abhorrently, Belgium allows child euthanasia. We see in these countries how quickly life is cheapened, diminished, and devalued.
In 2021, my father died. In July of this year, my uncle (Oxfordian scholar Alexander Waugh) also died. Both suffered slow and painful deaths. Both would have met the qualifications for assisted suicide. But both died beautifully: peacefully, with dignity, and surrounded by family.
To disrupt this natural and extraordinary process would be to denote a bomb under the foundations of our society and threaten all that we know. Life will be valued in terms of its convenience, as opposed to its merit.
Leadbeater has said “the current situation, for people who are terminally ill, is you’ve got three options. You can suffer and have a very difficult, very painful death; you can go to Switzerland with Dignitas; and the other option is you can take your own life”. She fails to acknowledge the fourth possibility: to die in the knowledge that you are loved and that your life is valuable. Instead she seeks to create a utilitarian dystopia in which society’s vulnerable will be cast aside, and into the jaws of death.