Jonathan Tame writes from Cambridgeshire, UK. He spent 10 years as Director of the Jubilee Centre in Cambridge UK, and now works to promote housing reform.
A Private Members Bill has brought the debate about assisted dying back to the UK Parliament this week. The campaign to legalise assisted dying is fuelled by heart-breaking stories of people with terminal illnesses who fear an agonising and undignified death. It seems compassionate to limit their suffering by enabling them to end their own lives. However, to make this possible for a few could have serious consequences for the many. Legalising assisted dying would cause five relational fissures to weaken society:
1. The relationship between words and meaning
‘Assisted dying’ is a misnomer. It better describes the assistance given to people close to death by thousands of relatives and people in caring professions. They help make the last weeks of a person’s life as comfortable as possible, not just physically but emotionally and relationally too. This debate is not about assisted dying, but assisted suicide.
2. The relationship between doctors and their patients
Assisted suicide that requires doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs would turn their ethics – and their relationship with patients – upside down. The current proposals would also require doctors to ‘play God’ by pronouncing whether or not a patient has less than six months to live – and is thereby eligible for assisted suicide. If medics are authorised to take life – not just save life – the ground rules of the doctor-patient relationship will be fundamentally altered.
3. The relationship between old people and their relatives/carers:
Tragically, hundreds of old people are abused and mistreated every year as it is; changing the law would leave dependent old people vulnerable to the notion that they have become too much of a burden to others. To be given the option of relieving this burden by requesting assisted suicide would place a huge moral dilemma on many of them.
4. The relationship between vulnerable people and wider society
Even though the proposed change of law is intended for a relatively small number of cases, it would normalise assisted suicide and make it socially acceptable. There is growing evidence for this in Canada and Belgium, for example, where assisted suicide has been legal for a while. It would then be a matter of time before assisted suicide is not just permitted for exceptional cases but increasingly expected – increasing the sense of isolation and rejection felt by old or disabled people.
5. Lastly, the relationship between the financial industry and law makers
Lurking in the shadows in this debate are the substantial cost savings to health services and pension providers should it be possible to hasten the death of the sick and elderly. Legalising assisted suicide would prise open the door for economic factors to influence future debates in parliament and the courts on euthanasia.
The arguments for assisted suicide focus on freedom of choice for the individual who is suffering – but is this the same as the good of society? Any change in the law should consider all who would be affected by it – everyone who is implicated relationally or caught up in the unintended consequences.
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