The Observer view on assisted dying

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/05/observer-view-assisted-dying

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Few issues unleashed by modernity are more complex than that of assisted dying. We live in an age where we have the drugs to prolong life and to end it almost instantly. As a result, our pharmacology is outpacing our law.

While both sides of the debate would agree that a protracted, painful death is an end no one wishes for, an ageing population means this is precisely the fate that awaits an increasing number of people. But while it is unarguable that a long life should be a source of joy, many would insist that quality must trump quantity. A debilitating illness that devours a person and results in a long and lingering death is no life, so they reason.

For others, and it has to be acknowledged they are often, though not exclusively, drawn from faith groups, human life is sacred and must be preserved at all costs. The views of the two camps are antithetical and cannot be resolved by any amount of sophistry. This is one debate that is fundamentally binary in nature.

The latest salvo in this debate, fought at close quarters and with no ground given, will be fired this Friday when a private member’s bill receives a second reading debate in the House of Commons. Tabled by Rob Marris MP, the bill would establish a framework that allows terminally ill, mentally competent adults to request life-ending medication from a doctor. The patient would then have the choice to self-administer that medication at a time of their choosing.

The bill’s supporters – the Observer among them – argue that such a change in the law would not result in more deaths; rather, it would help alleviate the suffering of dying people who want the choice to control how and when they die.

Once, such an argument would have been considered outlandish, out of step with societal norms. But we live in an increasingly secular world. We do not genuflect to the church as we once did. Many see a man with locked-in syndrome and see a man who should be helped to die.

Our legislators seem to know which way the wind is blowing. The influx of a new generation of MPs following May’s election has given succour to right-to-die campaigners who believe there is now greater support in the Commons for assisted dying than previously. 

Marris’s bill differs little from one introduced by Lord Falconer last year. That bill was unanimously passed in the House of Lords during its second reading. Furthermore, during two days of debate at committee stage, two-thirds of peers voted against a pair of amendments designed to derail it. 

Parliament’s burgeoning enthusiasm for a change in the law is eclipsed only by that of the public. The largest ever poll conducted on assisted dying found 82% of the public now support Falconer’s proposals. 

It appears, then, that it is a question of when, not if, there will be a change in the law. And yet we must heed John Stuart Mill’s call to be wary about the tyranny of the majority. For, as the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, argues in today’s Observer, such a change would mark the crossing of a legal and ethical Rubicon. “We are asked to sanction doctors participating in individuals taking steps to end their lives,” Welby writes. “This is a change of monumental proportions both in the law and in the role of doctors.” 

Welby observes that any “change in the law would place very many thousands of vulnerable people at risk”. Fearing that they were a burden, some would choose to end their lives, he says. The risk, ultimately, he warns is that we end up in a society “where each life is no longer seen as worth protecting, worth honouring, worth fighting for”. For Welby, “the current law is not ‘broken’. There is no need to fix it.”

Society seems to disagree, as does one of his predecessors, Lord Carey. So, too, do the majority of Christians, according to at least one poll. But this is not to say that polls should determine policy nor that the church’s entrenched opposition to reform be ignored.

That change is coming seems inevitable, but if it is to happen, it must be after the hardest of won battles. Given what is at stake, the barriers such legislation needs to overcome must be set that much higher.