Latest news with #DignityInDying
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- Health
- The Guardian
I hope this is the last piece I ever have to write about assisted dying
MPs, read this horror before you vote today. Here's how some people are slowly dying, right now, in mortal agony untreatable by the best palliative care: 'Some will retch at the stench of their own body rotting. Some will vomit their own faeces. Some will suffocate, slowly, inexorably, over several days.' An average of 17 people a day are dying these bad deaths, according to 2019 figures, as reported by palliative care professionals who see it happen. The Inescapable Truth, a report from Dignity in Dying, revealed what is usually kept hidden from us: the shocking last months for the unluckiest. It could happen to you or me. The assisted dying bill's final Commons vote today is no abstract debate about slippery slopes or what God wants: to do nothing is to inflict torture on many. The vote may be tight: unwhipped private members' bills rely on MPs turning up. At second reading, 330 were in favour, 275 against. After 100 hours of detailed scrutiny and many strict amendments, more than 40 MPs switched both ways. No longer a judge, but an expert panel with a lawyer, social worker and psychiatrist will examine each application. Compromises include a four-year wait after royal assent for the service to be set up. An ITV News vote tracker expects 154 MPs to vote for it, 144 against, 22 undecided and 21 abstainers. Opponents are wheeling out their last-gasp tactics. Catholic bishops this week warned that the future of care homes and hospices will be put into 'grave doubt' by the legislation: 'Institutions whose mission has always been to provide compassionate care in sickness or old age, and to provide such care until the end of life, may have no choice, in the face of these demands, to withdraw from the provision of such care.' Disingenuous is a polite word – under the bill, health and social care workers can refuse involvement in the assisted dying process. God moves in such mysterious ways that some of his followers hide his involvement, without publicly revealing their religious reasons for opposing. The campaign group Our Duty of Care doesn't mention God on its website – nor the fact it shares an office with and is financed by evangelical groups. Membership of Care Not Killing, which runs the Our Duty of Care campaign, is largely religious. Only God ordains the time of our entrances and exits. The mystery is its secretiveness. Presumably that's because his word cuts very little mustard in a country where 53% have no religion. Others of the faith avoid mentioning him, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg on GB News, accusing Labour of 'a cult of death', with Labour MPs 'voting to finish off the elderly' in the week of the 'terrible vote from the House of Commons to allow infanticide of babies in the womb', after the Commons decriminalised women ending their pregnancies. Cult of death? That sounds more applicable to those willing to let others die in painful agony. But not all opponents are religious. One of the oddest is the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych). Although the bill requires patients to be mentally competent to request assisted dying, among other objections the RCPsych reminds MPs that 'terminal illness is a risk factor for suicide'. That's the point – a time when suicide might be quite rational. Offering psychiatry instead of an easeful potion could be greeted with expletives from those in agony. Disability groups have been persuasive, fearing they may be pushed towards shortening their lives, always at risk of being treated as inconvenient. But polling of those with disabilities shows 78% in favour assisted dying, in line with the rest of the population. Scotland, Jersey and the Isle of Man have moved ahead of England on this, and France just joined the many countries in legalising the right to die. Hundreds travel to Dignitas in Switzerland: 52% of Brits say they would consider this grim and lonely death, but few can afford the £15,000. About 650 suicides of the dying are recorded; there may be more of these lonely, unassisted deaths. If I sound intemperate, it's the memory of my mother's prolonged painful death: she thought her good GP would ease her way out but, post-Shipman, he couldn't. No, as some hope, morphine is not a kindly drug wafting you away – it can't remove all pain. Enough people have witnessed bad deaths that public opinion is strongly behind the right to die. Opponents warn people may be pushed into a faster death because they are a perceived burden on their family. To avoid inflicting suffering on those around you seems to me a good reason for not leaving a miserable memory of your final months. Knowing it's an option, even if never used, will comfort many given a terminal diagnosis. What if, opponents keep warning, someone is pressed into it? Everything is a balance of risks: set the absolute certainty of some horrible deaths against the possibility that a dying person may lose a few months of life. Which is worse? As Labour reaches one year in office, this vote should join this week's abortion decriminalisation as another milestone in the long history of personal freedoms that is always the party's legacy. While Harold Wilson never personally backed Roy Jenkins's long list of radical reforms, Keir Starmer has vociferously supported both bills. If it passes, it goes to the Lords, where 26 bishops will do their damnedest to stop it, reminding us why they should be removed along with the hereditaries. I have written often over many years on the right to die when we choose. I hope I never need to again. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
Telegraph
14-05-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Advertising assisted dying set to be banned in attempt to strengthen Bill
Kim Leadbeater has proposed that advertising assisted dying services should be banned as she attempts to strengthen her Bill before it is put before Parliament. The Labour MP, who is sponsoring the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill which would allow people in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live to end their lives, suggested that those promoting such a service should be fined. On Friday all MPs will be able to debate changes to the legislation in the House of Commons for the first time since voting to legalise assisted dying in principle in November. Ms Leadbeater has tabled an amendment to the Bill banning adverts 'whose purpose or effect is to promote a voluntary assisted dying service'. It comes after the pressure group Dignity in Dying posted adverts on the London Underground network ahead of the first Commons vote on the Bill. One of them featured a woman alongside the phrase: 'My dying wish is my family won't see me suffer and I won't have to.' Dame Harriett Baldwin, a critic of the legislation, said: 'I still plan to vote against the Bill when it returns to the House of Commons but if MPs choose to approve this legislation, I wanted to make sure that we don't face the nightmare scenario of our daytime TV screens full of troubling adverts offering assisted suicide.' Ms Leadbeater said: 'I promised to return to the issue of advertising after it was raised during the committee stage of the Bill. There's widespread consensus that if the law is to change we wouldn't want to see adverts for assisted dying. 'I was happy to work with Dame Harriett Baldwin and Rebecca Paul, two MPs who didn't support the Bill when it was last voted on, to put this into the legislation. I've always made it clear I'm ready to work with people across the House to make the Bill stronger and more effective and I hope this change will be supported when it comes before MPs for approval on Friday.' Last week, Ms Leadbeater told the Hansard Society podcast: 'I've spoken to colleagues across the House about this issue, and one thing I am very clear about is that if the law is to change it would feel inappropriate for this to be something which was advertised.' Critics have expressed concern that there remains a lack of safeguards to protect vulnerable groups after MPs on the Bill committee heard from experts. In another blow to the Bill, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) came out in opposition to the legislation this week. Dr Lade Smith, president of the RCP, said the organisation remained neutral on the principle but had a number of concerns about the legislation in its current form. It found 'a number of issues' including the possibility a terminally ill patient could be suffering from a 'very treatable' mental disorder and the fact that there was no requirement by someone who wanted to end their life to inform family members MPs have since tabled an amendment to ensure that t he next of kin of adults under the age of 25 must be informed if their relative is seeking an assisted death. Members of Parliament voted to legalise assisted dying by 330 votes to 275 last year. The Government has remained neutral on the issue and parliamentarians were able to vote according to their conscien ce. Sir Keir Starmer voted in favour of the Bill, along with Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor. But Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary and Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, all voted against it.
Telegraph
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
In the name of progress: eugenics then, euthanasia now
Progress may be the most dangerous two-syllable word in politics. Slapped on to all sorts of monstrosities it has become a means of justifying inadequate arguments and evading scrutiny. To the unthinking politician, if an issue constitutes progress it is inevitably part of a wider move towards enlightenment, is an inherently good step and, crucially, must happen sooner or later. The belief means identifying barriers to progress; and, by extension, viewing their removal as a social good. This isn't a modern outlier or bug but a longstanding feature of progressive thought. It was in the name of progress that the Fabian and socialist eugenicists – from Beatrice and Sidney Webb to Bertrand Russell and Marie Stopes – advocated the sterilisation of the disabled and sick during the 20th century. It was in the name of progress that George Bernard Shaw supported 'the socialisation of the selective breeding of man', even, chillingly, proposing the euthanasia of the mentally ill and other members of the 'unfit' classes via 'extensive use of the lethal chamber'. In short; a very dangerous word indeed. This isn't just a history lesson either; the groups these people supported still exist. Dignity in Dying, the main advocacy group for assisted dying, was founded by a member of the Eugenics Society and was known until 2006 as The Voluntary Euthanasia Society. In our own day, the same concept is being invoked once more as a sort of unanswerable force. The debate over assisted suicide is intensifying on both sides of the Border this week, as Kim Leadbeater's Private Members' Bill returns to Parliament and Holyrood MSPs voted in favour of a similar Bill proposed by Lib Dem Liam McArthur. In her efforts to champion her Bill on social media, the former is emerging as someone with Van Gogh's ear for diplomacy; both tactless and self-aggrandising. This week she dismissed opponents as 'scaremongering and ideological', while quoting praise of herself from a supporter, describing her as a 'social reformer'. At least irony hasn't been assisted with its death. The inconvenient truth is that, in this case progress involves the sidelining and rejection of the very people whose needs it claims to advance. The Royal College of Physicians recently published a statement warning that the Bill's 'deficiencies' render it unsafe for patients and doctors. Was this 'scaremongering'? Every user-led disability group opposes the change, as do a majority of palliative care professionals. Are they 'ideologues' too? If Leadbeater is foolish and groups like Dignity in Dying malign, there is a third and more complacent category of argument invoking the consistently-disproven concept of 'the right side of history'. It is telling that despite supporting assisted suicide in principle, former Scots Tory Leader Ruth Davidson couldn't quite endorse the parallel Bill before Holyrood in its current form. Instead, in a column this week, she urges MSPs simply to trust that they will be able to iron out any problems at a later date. She also cites the number of countries around the world offering assisted suicide as if this, in itself, constituted an argument. What many of these jurisdictions actually show is quite the opposite to Davidson's Panglossian faith that everything will work itself out. A particularly invidious aspect of this debate has been the manipulation of language. Not only is there a tendency to imply, per Leadbeater, that the pro-side has a monopoly on compassion, relatives' understandable efforts to prevent their loved ones from taking their own lives have sometimes been reframed as 'coercion'. During the 'expert' witness testimony, one Australian MP referred to ' assisted dying ' in exquisitely Orwellian fashion, as a form of 'suicide prevention'. There has even been some squeamishness about using the word 'suicide' at all, though the Bill would by definition amend the 1961 Suicide Act. It's as if they fear this serious change to the social fabric will be impossible without annexing language to limit what their opponents may say. And now, showing tragedy and farce are far closer than we think, Kim Leadbeater is apparently a 'social reformer'. Parliament's own impact assessment also reveals this tendency. It was slipped out under the radar on Friday afternoon after the local elections. This too contained the dystopian language we've come to expect from the debate; focusing on the service's 'inclusivity'; perhaps to give women, disabled and vulnerable people equal access to death. The Bill already covers a far wider remit than its proponents initially promised. The irony is that Leadbeater and her allies no doubt think of themselves and their actions as progressive. Yet each of them is simultaneously engaged in the business of ignoring the voices of the poor and the vulnerable. This Bill is so comprehensively at odds with the principles of previous social reform that enacting it will mean rewriting the Bill on which the National Health Service was forged. The legislation is so far-sweeping that the Bill's proponents may become the first people to undo the basic healthcare principle that life should be preserved. This is worth restating for all the 'sensibles' out there; it wasn't Mrs Thatcher or 'Tory privatisation', but a Labour backbencher who will fundamentally change the stated purpose of the NHS – and in a final irony, will do so not in the name of profit but of progress.
