LAST week Kim Leadbetter’s bill to allow assisted suicide was published. It will be debated at the end of this month.
Christians have a strong conviction of the sanctity and gift of human life. We believe all human beings have a value, young, old sick, healthy; those of sound mind and those suffering from dementia or other mental illness.
The huge danger; and it has been shown in every jurisdiction that starts down this road, is that the commendable desire to relieve suffering quickly morphs into vulnerable people feeling they ought to end their lives so as not to be a burden.
Oregon in the USA, with legislation similar to what is proposed, has seen a significant increase in people who elect for assisted suicide saying that they feel like this. From 12 per cent in 1998 to 43 per cent in 2023. Sadly, many people are in coercive relationships and elder abuse is a major issue.
Someone told me recently of his aunt in Canada who chose assisted suicide, despite the pleas of family not to.
She was visited by the local doctor (known as Doctor Death in the town– because that was now all he did) who administered a sedative followed by a lethal injection.
Canada is now at the forefront of extending the right to have someone assist your suicide far beyond life-threatening conditions to a range of mental illnesses which may be transient and treatable.
It has always been at the heart of a doctor’s vocation to seek to preserve life. Where that preservation becomes impossible, the imperative becomes helping someone to die as comfortably as possible. But assisted dying requires a doctor to assist. That is a huge ask of someone who has taken the Hippocratic oath. I was grateful to see that in action as my father died in France a few months ago.
I have never had to watch a loved one suffer at the end, and completely understand how people would want to avoid that if at all possible. But with our hospice care most people do die well.
In my view, this change runs huge risks in diminishing our respect for one another and threatening the vulnerable. The offer of choice may for many prove to be no choice at all.
