The argument in favour of the Bill proceeds to say “And why can’t we do that for humans?”
In fact, I believe in many cases we do, which I’ll return to below. But the point about my cats’ deaths is that they were loved. What about the animals which aren’t? What do you think happens to them? Kitty was incontinent for the last six months of her life. It made our house stink and we spent hours every week mopping up. We welcomed the burden. It’s the price of love.
Can we guarantee that this will apply to every incontinent, elderly human? I believe the moral case for the Bill fails if a single human were to be killed through spurious arguments about “burden of care”. (I am no utilitarian.) There is a statistical correlation between the propensity to commit cruelty to animals and to humans. Those who have no qualms about killing their “nuisance pets” will be able, I’m sure, to find forms of words that justify the same case for their relatives, especially those left in the arms of the state’s Care Homes. For how much would such deaths count in Parliament’s new calculus of suffering?
“I believe the moral case for the Bill fails if a single human were to be killed through spurious arguments about ‘burden of care'”
This dystopian calculus seems to sit perfectly within the age we inhabit. It’s like the country has accelerated into the Ballard novel I inhabited in the late Nineties, even as I’ve matured into something out of P.G. Wodehouse.
So it isn’t surprising that a state which sanctions Hate Marches in its capital thoroughfares, loud with chants for death; that rips down its built history (Smithfield is going! What next? St Paul’s?) and whose museums it permits to linger only that they may hector its citizens about the sin of their supposed racism… It doesn’t surprise me that such a society would eventually find its apotheosis in the form of this Bill. If the culture upstream celebrates its own extinction, why are we surprised that politics downstream finds a way to codify your own obliteration into law.
Welcome to the age of death: look at the adverts on the Tube, grotesque beyond the imagination even of P.D. James, whose Children of Men novel foresaw and described our childless pitilessness in many ways. Even she didn’t imagine that the “Quietus” would be represented by adverts showing an ecstatic young woman dancing around her fitted kitchen in joy that one day the state will kill her.
These adverts defy explanation, other than that we have reached end-stage nihilism. If we are presenting death as an aspiration, ours is almost by definition a culture that cannot be trusted with assisted dying procedures.
And, yet, there are already people that we can trust with ours. If you’ve had the privilege of being with someone at the end of their life you’ll know what “palliative care” means: the use of opioids to prevent pain, a side-effect of which is, eventually, the suppression of respiratory function. It is the greatest gift that medical professionals do for us. The crude mechanics of a Parliamentary Bill will rip apart the near-sacred, and sometimes silent, understanding between patient, doctor and carer.
Should I meet my end through a painful, lengthy condition like a cancer with no chance of treatment, I want that end to follow a conversation between myself and my physician — or my physician and my (power of attorney holding) spouse — and I want it to be about managing my pain, or my agitation. I’m completely aware of what that means and the very good reasons why it’s impossible to spell it out. With respect to Leadbeater, no MP has the right to insert their desires into that space.
Anyway, the Bill isn’t about palliative care, which is telling. It doesn’t guarantee that its extent won’t creep beyond the will of its writers. It represents one end of a slippery slope, in other words.
“I don’t want to be a burden,” I’d think to myself, lying on that godforsaken Italian beach. Either to myself, or to others. How tempting to slip under the water and stop being a nuisance.
But we’re all burdens — that’s the point of love. To the extent that we suffer pain at the end of our lives, then that pain must be ameliorated — as it can be — even should such amelioration shorten our existence. A Royal Commission into Palliative Care, and how to improve it, would be welcome.
That will not be the outcome of this Bill, should it become law. It will give power to Government to bring about your death, and for such a killing to be entirely legal. That’s not a state I want to be in and however much you’re suffering, I don’t wish you to be in it either.
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23 Conservative and three Reform UK MPs voted for this Bill, and three Conservatives abstained. If they had all voted against it, then there would have been a tie, 304 votes each, and by convention the Speaker’s casting vote is for the status quo.
This has nothing to do with party politics, and seeking to introduce that element into the debate is reprehensible.
I am not a member of any political party. Heaven forfend.
That’s not my point. What’s yours, in plucking those numbers out of thin air and attaching them to specific political parties?
The are first and foremost Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, not Tory and not Reform. They are there to stop bad legislation. Yesterday MP after MP voiced concerns about the wording of the bill, and then lamely voted for it anyway in the hope committee stage might fix it. By definition they voted for bad law.
Oh Nell, what on earth are you doing referencing “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” in such sanctimonious terms? This is a Private Members bill. And you accuse me of not having read the bill (in a different comment)?
They voted for a popular law. Also, there is now a King on the throne, so it’s “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition”.
Those MPs didn’t vote that way though, fortunately.
They should have been organised to vote along party lines with a slim one-line whip and some direct leadership shown by Ms Badenoch and Starmer.
Half of Reform’s MPs did oppose it, including Farage, though that is still disappointing to conservatives. As for the Tories, we know at least a 1/4 of their number belong spiritually if not practically in the Liberal Democrats.
Given the conditions, the vote was very close and fundamentally determined by the inequities of the British voting system with Reform’s harvesting of anti-Tory votes being crucial last June in producing a freakish Labour supermajority.
This is very dangerous legislation, as Mr. Archer so ably describes. Parliament has passed dangerous legislation before, most notably in anti terrorism laws during the Troubles. What Parliament did was to insert a sunset clause, whereby the law would become inoperable on a certain date. Renewing it would require fresh legislation, with the Parliamentary scrutiny that entails.
I suggest that this legislation should be operable for no more than five years.
I disagree that the writer ably describes the case against the bill. His existential angst at a certain point in his life, whilst worthy of sympathy and credit due to growing past that experience, is clearly going to bias his case. More importantly, it has no relevance to those in the late stages of terminal illness whose most profound wish would be to have their suffering brought to an end, and without having their own loved ones potentially involved in criminal proceedings should they seek to assist in carrying out that wish.
If you admit any such case then you admit the whole argument.
I “admit” nothing of the kind. It simply doesn’t follow.
What are you getting at ?
‘Depression’ is not necessarily a terminal disease. What don’t you get?
I doubt you’ve read the bill. The bill has similar defintions and provisions to the Canadian MAID Act.
The most glaring loophole is the definition of terminal illness refers not just to illness and disease but also “condition”. If the intended scope was a relative dying of MND or cancer, then illness would be quite sufficient. Condition extends the scope to every type of medical diagnosis.
The definition goes on to say “death in consequence of that illness, disease or medical condition can reasonably be expected within 6 months.” So if someone diagnosed with autism (a life long condition) threatens suicide because of how they feel about their autism, then they could be reasonably expected to die within 6 months by a suicide attempt.
And what does “reasonably be expected within 6 months” mean? Who testifies that? It is a test that will be satisfied by a new army of careerists to provide that verification, not least because the bill specifically demands medical carers to refer cases if a second opinion is demanded, with no limit on repeat referrals fishing for a satisfactory referral.
The next clauses refer to the Mental Health Act 1983 and Equalities Act 2010 to excluse those solely wanting assisted suicide on grounds of mental health. But neither of these Acts address the issue and on their own cannot define when mental health alone cannot be justify assisted suicide. It will be tested in the courts, not defined by law.
As can be seen, there are no safeguards in this bill preventing its widespread use by healthy but unwanted people. The sad, the lonely the marginalised.
This doesn’t mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Not everybody has ‘loved ones’.. some people have nasty, greedy, unloving ones..
Whilst true, that also removes any compassion from those who do, and who wouldn’t wish to impose criminal sanctions on them by complying with their most profound wishes.
Half of Mr Archer’s argument is that the UK is unlikely to be any different from other countries that have embraced state-assisted dying, where the option is open (as in Canada) to the depressed, the homeless and the hard up as well as the terminally ill.
Lad, do you understand the use of palliative care as described? Of course I knew the pain meds and anti-anxiety meds I gave to my loved one dying of cancer were also slowing breathing and somewhat hastening his death. But the reason we gave them was entirely to make sure he had no pain as the cancer took his life. It is entirely possible, it is done all the time, to keep suffering at bay while cancer patients are dying. Thus, the goal here is not to end suffering. We in the West already can do that. The goal is therefore to hasten death. Ponder that reality.
Exactly. Well explained. It is not about euthanasia. It is about anasia.
Surely if a life ceases to be worth living (in the opinion of the person living it), bringing death forward is a viable option?
You only talk of the final hours though. What about the 6 months of illness and wasting away that precede those last drug fuelled days in palliative care? Why should somebody suffer that just to have to end pushed forward a few hours thanks to a cocktail of drugs to take away the last bit of pain?
You’ve accused the author of false consciousness but then you go on to insist that anyone whose “profound wish” is to die could not be afflicted by false consciousness themselves. Classic utilitarian legerdemain, that.
Of course it’s going to bias the case. That’s the whole point… the writer had been in a dark place in which he could have been hugely susceptible to the suggestion of ‘ending it all’ (he had contemplated it already)
In Canada he would definitely have been offered MAID & might not be alive today.
Agree but personally I think ALL legislation should have a sunset clause. Passes by 1 MP then 1 year. Passes by 200 MPs 10 years, unanimous 20 years, or similar.
Why? Future Parliaments can overturn laws if they wish.
I think it is important to understand that in the welfare state every human is a cost. Thus we should expect that Sir Humphrey will always be tempted to lower the costs of the bothersome humans in his charge.
Nonsense. Many bills have been brought forward to parliament over the years. If your point was valid, they’d have been.on the statute book long ago.
I believe this one has sufficient safeguards and the ‘slippery slope’ is not the inevitability that many assume.
In addition, legislation can be overturned.
“ I believe this one has sufficient safeguards and the ‘slippery slope’ is not the inevitability that many assume.”
I wonder what Canadians, Belgians and Dutch citizens would think of that assertion. Their assisted death statutes had “safeguards” too, and those have been progressively worn away.
And they are still happy with their laws. This is a goid day for choice bo least because it sends a messageto people like you to mind their own business.
It will be his business, and yours (and mine quite soon) so try not to be silly.
You are absolutely right and many young guys have already adopted your philosophy, so when a girl or woman or old woman is beaten next to them, they do not interfere in other people’s business, but film what is happening with their phone for a video on TikTok.
Just don’t tell me this is different. This is the same.
Yes, i know that perfectly well, no need to repeat this to this readership.
I see it as a chance for the UK to buck that trend. Nothing, in my opinion, overrides the need to grant those in the circumstances envisioned by this bill, agency over their own ending.
Neither you nor the state have any right deny them this mercy.
The likelihood of the UK bucking any ‘progressive’ trend is Zero. As in Net Zero.
Sufficient safeguards??? There are two things you’re being very naive about. Firstly a lot of those who voted for this bill yesterday did so on the basis that they can improve it because, according to them it doesn’t have enough safeguards.
Secondly & more importantly, this isn’t actually Kim Ledbetter’s bill. She’s been a very unremarkable MP so far.
This is Charlie Faulkner’s bill. He’s been campaigning on this for years. Because he’s in the lords he needs a sponsor in the commons.
He’s been working hard to see how he can get a bill through the commons & why previous attempts failed.
Be under no doubt, Faulkner & his fellow advocates for the right to be killed (because that’s what it is) anticipate that, just like in every other jurisdiction, the limits will be challenged in the courts & the safeguards will become meaningless over time.
Only the naive think otherwise
That’s Leadbeater/Falconer
I’m under no doubt.
Lord Falconer’s quote on Covid is revealing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55970601
The proposed legislation will be the start of another gold rush – for some.
No prizes for guessing who!
Who?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Falconer,_Baron_Falconer_of_Thoroton
I didn’t mean “Who is Lord Falconer?”, I meant “Who will be the beneficiary of the gold rush?”
There’s nothing more naive than those who seek to determine the fate of others in their last weeks of terminal illness. I’d strongly suggest you’d change your mind should you be unfortunate enough to find yourself in their position.
The challenges will go the other way, from zealots trying to stop it happening.
The bill avoids the slippery slope by driving right off the cliff. Britain is now the dystopic deadly state-with-a-smiley-face of the movie, “Brazil.”
It does get more and more like Brazil, doesn’t it? I was also reminded of that film by the tyrannical-yet-omnishambolic performance of Essex Police in the Allison Pearson case last week.
Facile, at best.
Logan’s Run is set in 2274 – exactly 250 years from now. Are we soon to be living in its prequel?
The only assurances you have are politicians promises
Let’s wait and see about that, but if the slippery slope does materialise will anyone on the pro side of this debate be willing to accept responsibility for that? For myself I have serious doubts about that
Has this so-called “slippery slope” manifested in any of the other countries that have similar legislation?
The promises of politicians regarding climate fear, immigration, gender, energy….
That’s the thing many other bills had far better safeguards that what this bill offers. They just didn’t get presented in the right climate of nihilism and lack of concern for the most vulnerable and will for absolute autonomy in order to have passed. Many laws change not because the bills that propose to change them are better than their predecessors but simply because they had better luck, they were presented in circumstances when MPs are more likely to vote for them.
What is wrong with a will for absolute autonomy?
Yet somehow the amount we pay to keep people alive just keeps going up and up.
What’s the argument against the death penalty for convicted lifers who request it? Much cheaper and the prisons department would no doubt welcome the savings. It seems to me that those once so against state-sponsored killing of criminals are now entirely in favour of killing law-abiding citizens.
Back in the day, when my father was an expert, giving talks in this field and the death penalty was still a thing in the UK, he pointed out the cost of an execution is actually very high, if properly accounted. So this, John, may not be an ‘obvious’ truth. ’
Was your father a liberal on this issue, by any chance? I find it extremely hard to believe that hanging someone could be more expensive than keeping them in custody for decades, but to be fair, we don’t even necessarily do that!
Yes, the progressive mind just ties itself into ever more absurd contortions, doesn’t it? Another example is that while strong marijuana has been ever more tolerated – it’s use is essentially legal today in the UK – we have a completely opposite vendetta against nicotine including even water vapour based vaping!
And booze, which brings in tax revenue, legal employment, it’s contents strictly controlled and it’s consumption can be measured.
The same can’t be said of illegal drugs, which makes criminals out of kids, causes immeasurable, harms, creates poverty and keeps people poor, without a penny in contribution to taxpayer funded public services.
I would point out that allowing abortion at any stage of pregnancy immediately led to the trade in fetuses in America (the later the abortion, the higher the price).
Everyone here knows what the assisted dying law did in Canada.
To suggest that things would be different in Britain is either arrogance or, more likely, incredible stupidity combined with a complete misunderstanding of human nature.
Everyone here knows what the assisted dying law did in Canada. The Canadians I have heard from on the subject tell me it is working fine.
There is a minimum infrastructure required for any movement.
How many people were negatively affected, what percentage? A fraction of a fraction is the answer.
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Nonsense. The Sir Humphreys of today haven’t got the guys. They’re all too risk averse and fearful.
Mission creep Soylent Green.
people already kill off their parents to get their wealth or remove the burden simply by withdrawing the medication or applying pressure. This option is for people who want to end their lives in peace at home
“If we are presenting death as an aspiration, ours is almost by definition a culture that cannot be trusted with assisted dying procedures.”
Yes, yes, yes! When we start defining death as a good thing we will be inevitably inclined to give it to other people. How could we not? Who is going to want to tell their heathy but depressed relatives that we won’t help them end their suffering if they wish? “You helped Jane go, why not me?”
And then what about the people who can’t or won’t make their desires known? Those who live “lives unworthy of life” to use a sinister but historic phrase. How could we be such monsters to let these whole classes of people continue suffering with their diminished physical and mental capacities when we have a way they could end it close at hand? And if they can’t, or won’t, tell us directly that they want to, well, we can feel confident we know what they want.
Compassion without discipline leads to murder.
There are remedies to end of life suffering. They are expensive and require significantly more work and love, but they exist. That we reach readily for the cheaper, easier options only speaks to how far we have fallen on the human scale.
I highly recommend The Thanatos Syndrome by Walker Percy.
No Country for Old Men.
Oh well. I’m not sure I like this country anymore.
I feel as if I live in an alien land. This isn’t Britain, surely? Kind, sensible, Britain which deals with such issues with unspoken mutual understanding (upping the morphine knowing the secondary result) – which people with a misplaced trust in formal, legal clarity call ‘hypocrisy’. Am I the only one horrified by the thought that if a very ill me wants to slip away, instead of a squeeze of the hand I have to apply to a judge?
I agree completely. The mark of a civilization is what is tacitly accepted by all in the silence.
Very well put, Prashant.
I’m sure there are other countries that you could relocate to.
This bill passing is good new for those who support choice which is 70% of tne public. Those who dislike it will not be compelled notwithstanding their emotionally driven blurting about ” coercion” and Canada.
“Those who dislike it will not be compelled…”.
Maybe not at first, but give the lawyers and bureaucrats some time. And “compelled” is such a no-no word. “Encourage” is so much more appropriate. i expect, over time, the powers that be will introduce benefits and sweeteners to motivate the unwilling – a one year credit on a loved one’s taxes, perhaps. Two year’s free tuition at uni. Who knows? And all in our names as loving, compassionate, and giving people.
..in the immortal (!) words of Del Boy.. “You know it makes sense…”
You mean 70% of the public has been lied to enough to get things kicked off. That stat sounds as authentic as the stats claiming strong support for Kamala or for continued open immigration.
This is the classic argument used by people who think that other people are too stupid/gullible/whatever to be trusted with taking their own decisions and that they know better and should decide for them instead. We heard it endlessly with Brexit. We’ve heard it again more recently against Trump in the US election.
At some point you need to decide whether you actually believe in democracy and people being free to make thier own choices or not.
With the benefit of hindsight, it might have been better to have a referendum. Then there could have been no argument.
Very funny
Well, that’s what it took to get Brexit done.
Ah, the Brexit/Trump argument that the voters are too stupid to know what they’re voting for?
There’s a good article in The Spectator today by Stephen Daisley who points out that this Bill has overturned many of the arguments against restoring the death penalty – which a majority of the public also supports. Worth a read.
Do you think that the pro-assisted-suicide lobby’s arguments (‘blurting’ if you like) are any less emotionally driven? Come on.
Indeed…
Sure… but WHOSE choice? Aye, that is the question?
Since nobody opposing the new legislation is doing so on speculation that people will find themselves “compelled” to undergo this measure, your dismissal of the sceptical concerns is redundant.
When I was 40 years old, 50, 55…. I was so busy that I never thought about getting old. You only really think about it when it is too late.
So many of those who approve this bill see it as someone else’s problem – not their problem. A sort of theoretical issue. Safeguards are only theoretical points, something to discuss in the pub or on UnHerd. It is easy to be tough about something when we discuss someone else or even when we talk about ourselves in the future – because the future is the future and it never comes.
Last month I witnessed the end of a two-year struggle with cancer. The lady died after an incredible battle, cocktails of drugs which made her ill and lose weight, experiments from senior doctors in the form of new wonder drugs, great attention from the family …. hope, no hope, hope, despair, more hope… At no point did she give up. Why?
The answer to the question and the reason for everyday hope is family. As a family person, she had children and grandchildren and her great thing in life was to watch those children grow and mature into adults. Every day the grandchildren were one day older, tomorrow a birthday, the next day a new girlfriend for her grandson. The family is the reason to linger.
But if you don’t have a family and you are old, you don’t have many reasons to cling on to life. You have hobbies and interests, you wait for the latest essay on UnHerd. But those are not very good reasons.
Where there are incomes and profits to be won and investments to be protected there will be an insatiable desire to exponentially grow the market and incentivise new customers. Any clunky legal safeguards designed by leadfooted technocrats aren’t worth the paper they are written on when exposed to the rationale of the marketplace.
This bill legalises a market in providing assisted dying. The bill creates a new assisted dying industry. A new lobby group. There’ll be those whose job it is to provide assisted dying or manage the service or invest in the infrastructure or handle the legal case work or advertise their organisation’s services. Organised careerists and businesses are going to lobby hard for more customers. Who is going to lobby for those who don’t want to be their customers?
Bingo! We have a winner.
It’s not a game, although some treat it as such…
Christopher Chantrill made a brief comment on the lack of value a state bureaucracy places on its own dependent clients – the logic of the system, leads them to be viewed as “useless eaters”.
You (Nell Clover) seem to be determined to blame the new assisted suicide legislation on the free market. Since in a marketplace, individuals are viewed as potential customers rather than useless eaters, constructing an argument would be an uphill struggle, so you merely throw mud in the hope that some of it will stick.
Presumably you would happily talk about “inbuilt obsolescence” as a supposed evil of the free market – the logic of this is to keep customers coming back for more. But surely killing a customer is a one-time only transaction? Giving a customer good treatment, on the contrary, would be the route to maximising further custom from the same individual.
Now in all likelihood, private investment will enter the picture in our new “assisted dying” society, but this will be working hand-in-hand with the state – it will not be working as part of a free market. Let’s even concede to you the future possibility that there might be private clinics offering “assisted dying”. Would such clinics dare to operate independently, with the dispatch of every “patient” a source of potentially ruinous litigation from whichever side of the family opposed the hastening of grandpa’s demise? Of course they won’t dare, outside of ironclad guarantees from the state that they will be immunised against such litigation – they would effectively be state-approved out-sourced operators for the NHS.
So where is your actual argument (as opposed to groundless insinuations) that a free market in particular would lead to a proliferation of assisted suicides? An actual free market, mind, not some kind of public-private partnership that the current government favours.
Christopher Chantrill made a brief comment on the lack of value a state bureaucracy places on its own dependent clients – the logic of the system, leads them to be viewed as “useless eaters”.
Nell Clover seems determined to blame the new assisted suicide legislation on the free market. Since in a marketplace, individuals are viewed as potential customers rather than useless eaters, constructing an argument would be an uphill struggle, so you merely throw mud in the hope that some of it will stick.
Those opposed to free markets standardly cite “inbuilt obsolescence” as a supposed evil of the free market – the logic of this is to keep customers coming back for more. But surely killing a customer is a one-time only transaction? Giving a customer good treatment, on the contrary, would be the route to maximising further custom from the same individual.
Now in all likelihood, private investment will enter the picture in our new “assisted dying” society, but this will be working hand-in-hand with the state – it will not be working as part of a free market. Let’s even concede to you the future possibility that there might be private clinics offering “assisted dying”. Would such clinics dare to operate independently, with the dispatch of every “patient” a source of potentially ruinous litigation from whichever side of the family opposed the hastening of grandpa’s demise? Of course they won’t dare, outside of ironclad guarantees from the state that they will be immunised against such litigation – they would effectively be state-approved out-sourced operators for the NHS.
So where is your actual argument (as opposed to groundless insinuations) that a free market in particular would lead to a proliferation of assisted suicides? An actual free market, mind, not some kind of public-private partnership that the current government favours.
At no point do I refer to a free market. The state can create markets, businesses and individuals too. A public private partnership is a market – goods are traded between different entities. A market doesn’t even need money. Favours and privileges can be currency in a market.
Christopher Chantrill made a brief comment on the lack of value a state bureaucracy places on its own dependent clients – the logic of the system, leads them to be viewed as “useless eaters”.
We’re on the same side, Nell Clover, regarding assisted suicide (opposed), but you seem determined to blame the new assisted suicide legislation on the free market. Since in a marketplace, individuals are viewed as potential custоmers rather than useless eaters, constructing an argument would be an uphill struggle, so you seem instead to be throwing mud in the hope that some of it will stick.
Opponents of free markets often pick out “inbuilt obsolescence” as one supposed evil that requires сustomers coming back for more. I think this analysis is incorrect, but let’s grant it for the sake of argument and look at how this supposed logic works in the case of assisted suicide. I think you will have to conced that killing a сustоmer is a one-time only transaction. On the other hand, giving a сustоmer good treatment would be the route to maximising further сustomеr from the same individual. So there is no prima facie reason to suppose that a free market would lead to an increase in assisted suicides whereas state bureaucracies would not – quite the reverse.
Now in all likelihood, private investment will enter the picture in our new “assisted dying” society, but this will be working hand-in-hand with the state – it will not be working as part of a free market. Let’s even concede to you the future possibility that there might be private clinics offering “assisted dying”. Would such clinics dare to operate independently, with the dispatch of every “patient” a source of potentially ruinous litigation from whichever side of the family opposed the hastening of grandpa’s demise? – Or indeed, criminal charges? Of course they wouldn’t dare, outside of ironclad guarantees from the state that they will be immunised against such litigation – they would effectively be state-approved out-sourced operators for the NHS.
So where is your actual argument (as opposed to groundless insinuations) that a free market in particular would lead to a proliferation of assisted suicides? An actual free market, mind, not some kind of public-private partnership that the current government favours.
Another completely bogus and misleading UnHerd headline.
This bill does not tell us that the state is happy to kill us.
The state is taking no position and is neither encouraging nor taking any decisions. Nor did anyone in yesterday’s debate sound “happy”. On either side. Nor should they be.
When abortion was legalised, I very much doubt that MPs were happy. They were largely acting to permit less bad overall outcomes.
The decisions will be taken by the individuals involved.
This is a reduction of state control in these matters. And an increase in individual choie and freedom.
If you’re going to make arguments against this bill, at least be intellectually honest about it. And drop this emotive nonsense.
Tthere are some arguments to be made – I listened to parts of yesterday’s debate and was impressed by the arguments on both sides (apart from Dawn Butler’s complete incoherence). Make those.
Except that to not take a position is, in fact, to take one. By allowing the practice and, as another commenter pointed out, allowing an industry to be built around it, the state is absolutely taking a position.
The State is the servant of the People, and the People want this. That much at least must be clear.
How do you know? Perhaps you should ask Mr Archer in his professional capacity how reliable are opinion polls.
I would have been perfectly happy for their to have been a referendum. Maybe there can be one before VAD is finally implemented.
The state is completely involved via state-employed doctors and judges, as well as a new state bureaucracy to facilitate the process.
Well that is a matter of opinion. And opinions are still sometimes legal. We are in the midst of abusive destructive and unsustainable legal systems. Cimate, immigration, energy and defense policies, as well as “disinformation.” No reasonable person thinks those frameworks are not damaging the people. Now, the industrialization of convenient dying will be the exception and not the epitome. Dream..or nightmare…on.
Well put!
“Another completely bogus and misleading UnHerd headline.”
Absolutely!
When the state legalised abortion there was no suggestion that some years later 250,000 unborn babies would be disposed of every year in England and Wales alone. What ‘less bad overall outcome’ could they have possibly have been thinking about?!
Abortion was once supposed to be, in then President Clinton’s words, “safe, legal and rare.” Well, look where we are now. I absolutely believe the slippery slope argument.
Here are a few ’emotive nonsenses’ others may not be willing to drop: greed, selfishness, laziness, hatred even …of their nearest but no so dearest. I think we can take it as read that the safeguards will lessen as the loopholes increase – to assume otherwise is naive.
The 1967 Abortion Act was framed to make abortion legal when, in the opinion of two doctors, the mother’s life was in danger. Without any further legislation, that requirement has morphed into abortion on demand up to 24 weeks. What guarantees do we have that we will not see in the UK (unlike the other countries that have gone this route) mission creep to state-assisted dying for a much broader group of people?
But the state HAS taken a position; it has given the process its blessing. Just as has happened with the gender madness, there will be the push to extend the boundaries of this measure beyond what any MP might have intended. Because that’s what always happens.
This is simply untrue and a gross distortion of the situtation. It does your argument no favours to do this.
Parliament is in the process of defining a possible process. The fact that something is permitted does not mean that it is recommended or “blessed”. Or that the state has any taken any view on any individual case. Using emotive words like “blessed” simply undermines an argument here.
Besides which, the actual (current) situation is that MPs voted to continue the discussion. Nothing more at this stage. Once again, that state has taken no position. The law has not – yet – changed.
In fact, my own view is that the only state involvement proposed in the process being outlined – that of introducing judges into the process – is probably unnecessary and likely to be unhelpful and counterproductive in practice.
The Britain I used to revel in visiting and walking around in admiration and pleasure, as recently as five years ago, no longer exists. Invaded and destroyed by its own government.
That is a bit melodramatic, isn’t it?
Perhaps but yesterday’s news led me to similar emotions.
I don’t like this bill, I don’t like the suppression of things people say, I think we really do have two tier policing, I think contempt among elites for our history is real, I think that our Governments’ willingness to force higher and higher liabilities on our children is wicked,…
Certainly, we can look on the past through rose-tinted spectacles, certainly some things are better (Mr Archer’s right to be married) but UR is right, things were significantly better 5 years ago and were pretty good a decade ago. That’s too short a time for rose-tinted glasses to make much difference
I can’t comment on many of those things (although British by birth, I now live in Australia), but my thoughts on the VAD Bill result was “The British Parliament has done something good for the first time in a while”.
If you do not believe politicians promises you do not believe the assurances about this bill .
Trouble is these promises will kill you
If you want to be killed, what is the problem?
“The British state is happy to kill you.”
I read no further than this silly assertion!
A well argued piece (apart from the irrelevant bit on unpalatable history) which I agree with.
To introduce such a Bill in these appallingly nasty times (current history) by this appallingly nasty government (happy to ‘euthenise’ 25,000 healthy Palestinian women and children) looks very dark indeed..
My mother, a nurse, explained that when both abortion and euthanasia were very illegal in Ireland, both occurred in a very personalised, professional, ethical, medical setting that the writer alluded to.. ways and means. Absolutely no need to get the state involved.. and certainly not the current British State!
Is it just coincidence that the NHS is overstreched (presumably with far too many burdensome old gits like myself?) or is that the conspiracy theorist coming out in me?
I would imagine it is the latter.
Thank you, Graeme. You have put it so well.
I also am greatly concerned for the many health professionals who object to being involved in any way for reasons of conscience. One clause (Clause 4 (5) in the Bill states “A registered medical practitioner who is unwilling or unable to conduct the preliminary discussion mentioned under subsection (3) must, if requested by the person to do so, refer them to another registered practitioner whom the first practitioner believes is willing and able to conduct that discussion.” What will happen if the doctor refuses to refer on grounds of conscience? Disciplinary action by the GMC; dismissal from the NHS?
Clause 23 purports to give some protection: “No registered medical practitioner or other health professional is under any duty (whether arising from any contract, statute or otherwise) to participate in the provision of assistance in accordance with this Act. (2) An employer must not subject an employee to any detriment for exercising their right under subsection (1) not to participate in the provision of assistance in accordance with this Act or for participating in the provision of assistance to a person in accordance with this Act.” But this seems to contradict Clause 4 as a referral is surely a ‘provision of assistance.’
The previous House of Lords Bill introduced by Lord Falconer at least contained the following clause under ‘Conscientious Objection’ (Clause 5): “A person is not under any duty (whether by contract or arising from any statutory or other legal requirement) to participate in anything authorised by this Act to which that person has a conscientious objection.” That, it seems to me, is a stronger protection for the thousands of health professionals who will wish to have nothing to do with this. I hope at the very least that Parliament will include much stronger protections in the Committee/Report Stages/House of Lords.
What is the big deal about a doctor saying “I won’t be involved in providing treatment of this nature, but I suggest you consult Dr …., whom I know does this kind of work”?
It is about giving us the right to decide for ourselves. It *removes* the right of the state to decide for you.
It’s not all about YOU my friend. Your desire to be alive should have no bearing on someone who themself wishes to die. You want to impose your standards on them, they are happy to respect your own choice. You claim morality in this… I see just arrogance and selfishness in desiring to inflict extreme pain on them.
And it’s not all about you either. Anyone can end it all by just stopping eating and drinking and a peaceful death will follow relatively quickly. I know two elderly ladies who took this course, one through fear of the trauma of cancer treatment and the other driven by grief. Both were loved and had families but decided to just fade away. Their choice, their agency.
Anyone that wants to die can do so.. easy peasy; let count yhe ways….. no need for legislation. Suicide is no longer illegal.. no law is necessary.. The reason for the law is so we can kill, not so we can die!
The point is so we can die easily and quickly. I have no problem myself. I own guns, and killing myself would be simple enough. However, guns are thin on the ground in the UK.
And leave a mess for others to clear up
Exactly. Far better to commune with the Green Needle, rather than Mr 9mm.
Excellent comment!
The “extreme pain” here is the real problem. With better hospice care this wouldn’t be an issue and this bill would be a non-starter. My mother in law died of cancer and had excellent hospice care and great opiod pain relief. Not sure if the opiod dose eventually is what put her over but she died blissfully unaware. No need to take a controversial drug that does NOT administer a painless death I might add. It first paralyzes you then slowly suffocates you. It looks blissfull from the outside because when paralyzed you don’t gasp and scream, but believe me, I can imagine the person would if they could. What a nightmare!
With better hospice care this wouldn’t be an issue and this bill would be a non-starter. That is simply not true. We have excellent hospice care in Australia, but we still have assisted dying legislation.
I too had a spate of ill health, from which I have since recovered that makes me question whether people will take their own lives unnecessarily.
From the age about 24 thru 30 I suffered from increasing pain in various places in my torso, which no part of the medical establishment could explain.
Unless you have lived with chronic pain you won’t realise how incredibly tiring it is. Although at no point did I consider suicide, it did occur to me more than once that I might be better off getting killed by a bus in an accident.
Then an osteopath who was unable to ‘crack’ the lower part of my back told me he think I might have ankylosing spondylitis, and should get checked out by a rheumatologist.
Sure enough, that’s what was causing the problem, but it was treatable by £3K p.a. weekly injection, so I now live a normal life.
I am not sure that if a pain free way out had been available, I wouldn’t have taken it.
I think people commenting should firstly state their age, state of health and whether they have children. Let’s cut to the chase at the get go.
….and their religious affiliation (from someone who is 62, in good health, childless and atheist).
My short and very reasonable message didn’t make it onto the page.
“That god-forsaken Italian beach.”
That really says it all. Lose God, lose it all, brick by brick. Lose especially Christianity and lose that spark in our dark world with its lonely beaches. Everything goes. That’s what’s wrong.
If God has forsaken any beach it must be Walton-on-the-Naze.
Though as the Good Book puts it, metaphorically refencing death, “When morning was come Jesus stood on the shore.”
I’m a bit shocked, Walton is lovely.
Amen, amen and amen.
Perhaps the British dependence on the state, escalated by governments, is what leaves us vulnerable to justifying our existence if we begin to consume too much resource. The costs we burden ‘our NHS’ with (genuflect now) social care, disability payments, carers payments etc etc …. leaves the British citizen open to a cost analysis in a socialist society. There will be pressure to be less ‘selfish’ and it may come to pass that it will be intimated that continuing to support the old and sick is depriving more ‘deserving’ citizens ( babies, the economically active, those approved of by the state) until it is said aloud that these bed blockers are risking the ability of society to function fairly. Who could doubt after years of evidence that mission creep will be the outcome? Just remember not so long ago how we were coerced into compliance by covid rules, in order to preserve the health of the hive.
Hospice and palliative do indeed perform these services for the very Ill. There is nothing that government doesnt destroy once they ger their paws on it.
Off to the phosphate farms ye go
I have killed many animals, mainly cats. Shot, drowned, strangled, suffocated, simply sat by, for a long time, waiting for them to die, stroking their head, or hugged them to death. But the way of killing I most disliked, felt uncomfortable about, were those when the vet was called in to “put them to sleep”. This happened when someone else’s sensitivity had to be considered, and was done for them, not the animal.
I have no doubt the majority would choose to die like this, in their beds, not by the sword, so they can hardly be described as hypocrits. But I don’t think being in the majority is grounds enough for for granting overall power of a decision in this case. The majority are fearful and squeamish, and often prefer to be anaesthetised from reality, particularly come to the experience of death? That doesn’t give them the right to anaesthetise the rest of us.
I lived on a small island which became a seasonal holiday destination, and it was the holiday makers who brought and then abandoned these ‘pets’, which then became pests. There were other animals, like iguanas, on the island, which were pests already, but adopted by holiday makers for their novelty. Holiday makers were appalled by the local drivers aiming for rather than away from iguanas on the road, and pretty soon you would believe the local population were the pests.
When the holiday makers eventually accepted that dogs and cats could be pests they addressed the problem with enthusiasm, beginning by forming a “humane society”. The chief characteristic of ‘humanity’ was that, instead of the inhumane methods of the local, vulgar population, they did not shoot but trapped animals instead and put them to sleep.
Many champions came forward when it came to alleviating discomfort associated with death, but the discomfort was theirs, and concerned their own self image more than anything.
And I never witnessed anything worse than the cat fighting that occured over who was to be the head of the Humane Society.
A lesson from ‘lived experience’. We had a terminally ill, suffering hen. Tried to kill her. She struggled to stay alive. Were she a human in a medically-assisted-dying country someone might have counselled her to accept the inevitable and to choose the less painful path. However, being a bird she was impervious to such counselling.
So you are saying that we should all try to be more like chickens? That 65 million years worth of evolution count for nothing?
For my part, this and Houellebecq’s piece both put their finger on the key issues- the former from a humanitarian point of view, the French writer coming more from a public intellectual tradition.
I see such moves as standing at the beginning of an epoch of genetic screening in determining profitable demographics i.e. where AI and biotech really come into their own.
Very well expressed! I was especially struck by “ If the culture upstream celebrates its own extinction, why are we surprised that politics downstream finds a way to codify your own obliteration into law.” The bill is a cruel man-made disaster of enormous proportions. Historians of the future will look back with horror and bewilderment that Parliament could be so reckless and irrational.
I’m ready to read views contrary to my own, but I’m disappointed that this article was published. In the interests of brevity I’ll quote just one of many such passages:
“There is a statistical correlation between the propensity to commit cruelty to animals and to humans. Those who have no qualms about killing their “nuisance pets” will be able, I’m sure, to find forms of words that justify the same case for their relatives,”
Voluntary assisted dying for people dying of an incurable disease has nothing to do with animal cruelty. Obviously.
I agree with every single point made in this article. The assisted state-assisted dying/suicide/euthanasia/murder bill is a crime against the British people, and represents a dangerous slippery slope from which it will be difficult to dig oneself out of.
The hellish end point of liberalism. In Canada they are already extending this to depressed veterans. Utterly awful…demonic and anti-human.
Reportedly, most of the speeches in parliament involved MPs expounding on their feelings about the sufferings of others. Only rarely was there a speech that had some analytical depth; So let’s try this: please explain why the present dispensation on “assisted dying” is inadequate.
Interesting point. I’m not sure of the slippery slope, but he makes a good point. We need to be very careful and err on the side of caution.
Excellent article.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
‘That’s not a state I want to be in and however much you’re suffering, I don’t wish you to be in it either.’ Well, thank you very much for your compassion, but frankly I really don’t want to be denied my judgement and my choice by someone who lurches from one fantasy land to another.
The point of human existence is not the avoidance of pain but the growth of virtue. And being a burden to others, even in pain, is one of the primary ways we help others grow in virtue.
Of course since our society long abandoned consensus on the point of human existence, it is no wonder we now fight about what constitutes a good end to that existence. It is sad to see people so confused, hopeless and lost, ao eager for their own non-existence… or the non-existence of their loved ones.
There is no point to human existence, we’re no different to any other animal except in terms of development. We live for a while, knock out a new generation then fall off our perch. That’s it.
If somebody decides they’ve had enough then let them go
Have I missed something in all this talk of state murders? If you don’t want to die, no one is forcing you. You can do it yourself of course, and many do. Some might beg a nearest and dearest to help in which case it would be better not to make a criminal for such an act of compassion.
This issue has generated far more heat than light, it is a subjective issue (a considered opinion, after 49 years in nursing) that has not benefited by the emotional entreatys of celebrity’s in main stream and social media. In the fullness of time, Medic’s and M’learned friends will contemplate the ennui attached and introduce a ‘usual reasonable fee’ the term when consulting these professionals, at some time there will be an attempt to improve the efficiency of the process by the Blob. Such efficiencies will have little to do with the welfare of the patient but to reduce the cost. We have yet to find out, the road to hell is paved with good intentions but many pitfalls.
What will be the response of major Insurance companies to this legal suicide?
“Many of those people are covered by life insurance policies that pay compensation to their survivors, giving them financial security in a very difficult time.
“Contrary to popular assumption, the vast majority of life insurance policies in the UK will issue pay-outs if a policyholder dies by suicide. Most insurers recognise that the mental health conditions that push someone to suicide are legitimate illnesses, no different than other causes of death.
However, these policies typically have suicide death clauses. These specify that deaths by suicide or self-harm will not be covered for the first 12 or 24 months of the policy. These clauses are in place so people aren’t encouraged to take their own lives, and to prevent fraud. ”
May you live in interesting times!
We westerners started making our secular, materialist bed during the enlightenment. It’s hypocritical (though not surprising) to now complain that we have to lie in it. According to a material cosmology, a material universe is by definition meaningless. An ironic statement, given that a purely material brain (again, according to a material cosmology) is incapable of inventing or discovering a notion like meaning. It’s catch 22s all the way down.
You say “secular” and “materialist” as if they are bad things.
I’m glad to be reading Graeme Archer again, he used to be a Telegraph columist for many years and I always enjoyed his sound common sense, and the warmth and kindness that so obviously informed his views upon every subject upon which he was asked to offer an opinion.
This is one of the better arguments against assisted dying I’ve read, though I also read Dr Emma Jones’ article last week in Unherd and I can see that there are very much two valid sides to this debate. I mention that article here because her argument, if I recall correctly, was that because assisted dying is already an unofficial practice, there ought to be no risk involved in officialising it with a raft of extra safeguards to ensure that undesired outcomes are avoided. I disagree, and for a set of reasons that Graeme’s article here enables me to see a little more clearly: it is precisely because the existing practice has developed in the grey area between law and medicine that I believe it is a dangerous misstep to formalise things into law.
As Emma Jones remarked in her article “the Assisted Dying Bill would in fact reduce the role of doctors in the process of death…” – well that’s exactly the problem, which Graeme identifies succinctly here. Once doctors no longer use their discretion in each case, a major obstacle has been removed, to the evolution and development of a faceless bureaucratic process according to the priorities of law and politics, and not according to those of medical care.
From Graeme’s article here: “I am opposed to the Bill both in its own terms but also because I doubt the very clause “if you so desire” would survive three months of judicial activism.”
Well quite. I’ll add to it and say that it won’t survive three months of collapsing public finances for some faceless actuary to wonder if we can’t save a few billion a year in pension liabilities by offering free overdoses to those without the wherewithal to argue.
This is going to go very badly wrong, I think.
This is going to go very badly wrong, I think. It is going perfectly well in other jurisdictions, including in Australia (where I live).
It is not going “perfectly well” in other jurisdictions. The Canadian example shows this beyond reasonable doubt.
Actual Canadians don’t seem to have an issue with how their legislation is working.
If Dominic Cummings thinks its a bad idea then I’m all for it.
This is just the usual alarmist claptrap about legalising what is already an everyday practice.
The key point is that “burden of care” begins to become the driving principle in these cases. All one has to do is look at the trends globally. In 1988, physician-assisted suicide was illegal in every country in the world. Today it is administered to an ever-widening circle, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Canada. In the United States, it is legal in Oregon Vermont, Washington, and California, and some form of physician-assisted suicide is being proposed in many other states. The economics of healthcare continue to move in this direction, as longevity adds to healthcare costs. Consequently, resistance to dehydrating cognitively disabled patients by removing feeding tubes, according to Wesley Smith, who first warned about this trend some 15 years ago has all but collapsed. Switzerland now welcomes “suicide tourism.” We are becoming a Kervorkian world.
I’m reminded of the camel’s nose.
Good analogy. I imagine that the camel will be in your tent drinking your beer before very long.
“That’s not a state I want to be in and however much you’re suffering, I don’t wish you to be in it either.”
In which case you seem to be the ideal case for whom this bill is designed; to relieve you from ever having to suffer the intolerable.
Excellent essay. As for the bill itself, it doesn’t matter what the conditions are at present. It seems a narrow, specific piece of legislation, however the box is open now, and it is arrogant to suppose that any person or persons can control what comes out of it. It is inevitable that this will lead to people with common mental health problems being put down, as has already happened on the continent. Additionally, our culture pathologizes everything, from emotional states to difficulty concentrating. One day the option to kill yourself on your own terms, without the intrusion of doctors or judges, for any reason ranging from terminal malignancy to a bad day at work will be one that left wing campaigners tearfully beg the electorate for.
Rarely have I heard the case against state sponsored killing more eloquently & powerfully put. Excellent piece which every MP who voted for this Bill should read.
There’s no comparison between Smithfield and St Paul’s.
Indeed. Smithfield Market is almost three times the age of St Pauls.
I don’t follow.
St Pauls was founded in 603 AD, Smithfield was granted its licence in the 14th century.
I’m going to go out on a limb here. I feel and emphasise with your depression of long ago and would even volunteer the perspective that your time in Northern Italy might have been your saving grace in that had you been in a more depressing inner city environment, you might have followed through with your suicidal ideations.
This for me highlights the precarious balance between the precautionary principle and the risk principle with the precautionary approach providing a mental health safeguarding buffer whereas the risk approach does not so much, especially if “desire” is the determining distinction.
Thus this appraisal is more about mission creep and a categorical shift from old age duty of care concerns to mid life and even young life duty of care concerns with assisted dying turning into assisted suicide.
However for me there is a more foundational perspective and one which is rooted in ecology, in that human life comes with a zero sum cost for the global ecology in the form of human overshoot.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/naive-optimism-vs-reality-the-true-state-of-our-planet-and-energy-future/
However this ecological utilitarianism does not come without its potential costs in that an authoritarian State could use assisted dying to engage in assisted sacrifice or even worse, assisted execution. So it is clear that the Assisted Dying Bill needs a deep sense of State accountability which gives deep regard to the Right to Life lest the Act be used for maleaovent purposes which if proven should carry a life long criminal sentence for those involved.
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Who be benefits from keeping elderly people with no quality of life alive beyond their own wishes? No one. That is the issue here, not depressed or disabled young people.
Humans weren’t designed to live this long. 90 somethings – war survivors – tell me that we are living too long.
It’s not if, it’s when, because my generation doesn’t want to go through what they’ve seen their beloved elders go through.
Man who admits that his emotional and mental instability impaired his capacity to make rational decisions about his own life now thinks that those same instabilities empower him not only to make decisions about everyone else’s life, but to impose them on everyone as well. Dangerous delusions don’t come more dangerous or delusional.