“Every single day for the final two weeks of his life, my husband asked me to smother him as he lay in his bed.”
This is just one of the many stories shared with Humanists UK during our long campaign to legalise assisted dying. It’s stuck with me because it is a position we all may find ourselves in – seeing someone we love in agony, begging us to help them, but not being able to. Few political questions are as personal as this.
The Office of Health Economics estimates that more than 5,000 people a year die in pain and without any effective pain relief, even with the best possible palliative care. The real numbers, when differences in access to healthcare are taken into account, are estimated to be much higher. But assisting a suicide is punishable by up to 14 years in prison in England and Wales. So families are forced into impossible situations. Do they help the person they love with their final request and bear the consequences, or do they watch on as the person suffers? Too many families’ final memories of their loved ones are tainted by drawn-out, painful and undignified deaths.
UK lags behind on compassionate law
As debate across the UK* drags on, we are falling considerably behind the rest of the world. There are 31 jurisdictions that now have safe, compassionate assisted dying laws, giving comfort and dignity to nearly half a billion people. Switzerland has allowed assisted dying for over 80 years, the US state of Oregon for 27 years, Belgium and the Netherlands for 20 years. When you speak to people from these places, they are aghast that we don’t have any law at all. “What, so you just let people suffer?” is a genuine question I was asked by a young Dutchman.
Courageous citizens have attempted to change the law through the courts. Ten years ago Tony Nicklinson, a man with locked-in syndrome, went all the way to the Supreme Court to argue for his right to a dignified death. He lost his case, and when he contracted pneumonia he refused food and treatment and died two weeks after the judgment. Humanists UK supported his family as they continued to campaign so no one else would have to suffer like Tony did, but when all legal options were exhausted, it became clear that parliament was the only route to reform.
Some hope with new parliamentary debate
There is now some hope. We look poised to debate this issue in Westminster next year. At least one MP picked in the private member’s ballot, has said he will introduce an assisted dying bill. The prime minister has committed to giving enough time for a debate and meaningful vote, which will be a decade since the last vote on this issue.
But this silver lining is on a heavy cloud. The most serious risk is that we are headed for a narrow, cumbersome and restrictive law, which will fall well below international standards and leave many people suffering. First, because some want any new law to be limited to people who are dying and have six months or fewer left to live. Second, because it may require the High Court to permit every death – something which no country in the world requires. These are two of the features of an assisted dying bill already in the UK Parliament, albeit in the House of Lords.
Limiting the law will exclude too many
A law limited to dying people in their last few months wouldn’t help people like Tony Nicklinson. It wouldn’t help many people with conditions like multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. It would be hard, and often impossible, for a doctor to confidently claim people with these conditions have fewer than six months to live. In fact, over half of the British people who travel to Dignitas in Zurich every year wouldn’t fit that narrow description.
It seems a ridiculous waste of political time and energy to create a law that will leave half the people whose very plight has inspired that law to continue to suffer without hope. That is even before the opponents of assisted dying get their chance to amend any bill even further. We know what the anti-assisted dying playbook can all too often be: confuse, delay, distract. Opponents of assisted dying will flood any Bill with amendments and lengthy debates, in order to filibuster it into oblivion.
Strong consistent public support
In contrast to these opponents or choice and freedom, public support for assisted dying is strong and consistent. Every opinion poll for the past decade has shown overwhelming support for a compassionate assisted dying law. Opponents decry these opinion polls claiming that the public doesn’t understand what they’re talking about. But a recent citizens’ jury went into intense depth about this subject, hearing facts and opinions on all aspects of this debate. The result, predictably, was that the public does understand what assisted dying is: and they support it.
Denying a framework of assisted dying in our country does not stop assisted dying. It simply outsources it. This hypocrisy helps no one, least of all those suffering as they exit this life through the torture chamber.
Let’s legalise assisted dying now – and get it right the first time around.
*Ed: Laws on assisted dying are a devolved matter in the UK, with the exception of Wales. The Scottish parliament at Holyrood is currently considering the assisted dying for terminally ill adults (Scotland) bill and the Isle of Man parliament has likewise voted to progress an assisted dying bill. Politicians in Jersey have also backed plans to introduce legislation. In Northern Ireland, both Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party have indicated they would consider supporting a change to the law.
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