You think that assisted dying has a place in the medical standard of care
I view the rise in calls for 'assisted dying', largely, as a failure by a society to effectively address the factors - mental health, cuts to welfare spending, lack of universal healthcare, poor palliative care, not enough medical research etc. - that contribute to the desire to end one's life.
Assisted dying is opposed by the British Medical Association, the Association for Palliative Medicine, the British Geriatrics Society, all major Disability Rights Groups and virtually every Royal Medical College.
In 2015 the UK ranked number one in palliative care:
UK is the best place in the world to die, according to end-of-life care index
UK is the best place in the world to die, according to end-of-life care index
The integration of palliative care into the NHS, a strong hospice movement largely funded by the charitable sector, specialised staff and deep community engagement are among the reasons cited by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
In other words,
kill the pain - both mental and physical - and not the patient. Rob George, former president of the British Association for Palliative Medicine, claimed that after a lifetime of caring for more than 20,000 dying patients, he could count on the fingers of one hand those who still desired assisted suicide or euthanasia after receiving the best palliative care.
Despite numerous assisted-dying bills in 15 years, every UK parliament has rejected legalization. The most recent was in September 2015, when the Marris Bill, which attempted to legalise assisted suicide for the terminally ill, was defeated in the House of Commons by a 3 to 1 margin - 330 votes to 118. A majority of both Conservative and Labour MPs voted against the bill. So left and right of our spectrum opposed it.
I do recognise, however, that assisted dying in the case of a terminally ill person can have a justifiable and even sympathetic rationale behind it, even if the ramifications in fact are too grave to risk legalising it. For this reason, I think it is critical that an appropriate degree of discretion is accorded to prosecutors and judges to temper justice with compassion in the "hard cases", as I believe is the case here in Britain.
But what I am saying is that if assisted dying
were to be legalised in my country (which it isn't), one needs to ensure that the "
right to die" does not become the "
duty to die", in which vulnerable people - elderly, disabled, mentally ill - are put under informal social pressure to end their lives out of fear of burdening their loved ones, carers or a state that wants to save spending from the public purse by cutting down on vital services and social welfare that can help these people live with dignity and personal independence.
Of course, one could counter that the right to life is not the same as a duty to live either, and I respect that. I am open to having my opinion changed.
The evidence from the Netherlands, nonetheless, suggests to some that the “
right to die” may subtly become the morally-obliging “
duty to die”. As such, I remain unpersuaded that we can prevent this slide from "
right" to a social pressured sense of "
duty".
This is a gift to the worst kind of right-wing libertarians, who desire nothing more than to abolish the welfare state. A society that allows pressure to be placed upon vulnerable individuals to terminate their lives out of fear of becoming a useless burden is an evil society, in my opinion.