February 14, 2025 - 10:30am
Suicide has a devastating impact on a community. The ripples are felt far and wide by family and friends. People torment themselves with questions that will never be answered: could I have done more? Why didn’t I know he or she was so distressed? Guilt and shame sometimes last for years, combining with grief to create unbearable anguish.
Why has this dimension featured so little in the debate around Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill? Research suggests that bereavement from suicide is, rather unsurprisingly, “known to be associated with numerous negative outcomes”, including impacts on both mental and physical health. Another study has found that between five and 15 relatives are affected by a single instance of suicide in a family.
Yet more evidence of the sinister consequences of suicide is that there is a one in 10 suicide risk among friends and relatives who have lost someone through the same means. The study found that “people bereaved by the sudden death of a friend or family member are 65% more likely to attempt suicide if the deceased died by suicide than if they died by natural causes.”
There is no reason why an assisted suicide should have less harmful effects. Imagine that your mother decides she is depressed and believes herself to be draining family resources, no matter how often you assure her she isn’t. She has a diagnosis that allows herself to opt for an assisted death under the — ever-expanding — terms of Leadbeater’s bill. Would you shrug and say: “it’s her decision”?
Even worse, what if your father takes himself off to a clinic where he imbibes a cocktail of lethal drugs supplied by a doctor without any discussion or warning? Would that be any less upsetting than discovering he’s chosen to end his life in a different way?
Supporters of the bill appear to exist in a different universe, where a warm bath of self-congratulation for reducing suffering washes away every objection. In their world, suicide is a rational, individual and above all empowering act, carried out in circumstances where coercion is vanishingly rare. The feelings of other people barely come into it; nor doe the risk of introducing suicidal ideation, to use the technical term, into a family.
Such ideas, once implanted in someone’s head, are very dangerous. Indeed, the impact can be multi-generational, as the classicist Edith Hall demonstrates in her harrowing and illuminating memoir, Facing Down The Furies: Suicide, The Ancient Greeks, And Me. Hall’s great-grandfather, whom she compares to the tragic hero Ajax, killed himself. So did his daughter, Hall’s grandmother, after whom she was named. She compares the impact of suicide to “a psychological miasma, since incidences of suicide can make suicidal thoughts more likely”.
A series of alarming admissions have already emerged from the committee considering the Leadbeater bill, such as the attempts to get rid of the approval of a High Court judge. But the effect of detaching suicide from its social context has hardly been addressed. Some supporters appear to believe that death should be a routine offer in healthcare, like chemotherapy or heart surgery, and doesn’t need to be part of a discussion involving anyone but the patient.
It’s a fantasy, of course, creating an illusion that death can be managed and isn’t something to fear — but a fantasy no less. Death is not a treatment. None of us can escape it, but we can avoid the extra burdens of guilt and shame created by state-sanctioned suicide.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.
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SubscribeIt turns out that much of Christian morality is one big Chesterton’s fence
What’s that,a Chestertons fence. He said nothing Jesus said can be made sense of by putting it into context because it was our of context when He said it. Brilliant.
The wisdom of the ages is ancient history.
Well, the dark ages showed up for a reason.
The ‘scrutiny’ of the bill is an utter disgrace. A committee with a majority of members who are publicly supportive of the warped principle of assisted death at almost any cost cannot be expected to be objective. A committee taking almost entirely supportive evidence cannot even pretend that decisions or recommendations have been properly considered. To cap it all, a private member’s bill has a much easier ride through the system.
I am astounded by the extraordinary hypocrisy that wants the state passing legal death sentences on at least some coerced elderly patients, yet vehemently disapprove of legally sanctioned death sentences for mass murders. If death sentences are so virtuous for some then what is the moral argument against the same sentence for others. A main argument against the criminal death sentence is that there are miscarriages of justice. If we are incapable of protecting innocents from judicial death why does anyone believe we can achieve this for the elderly and sick? That the bill even got this far demonstrates that the Commons is a cesspit of hypocrisy, irrationality and arcane elitism.
Keirdo the Weirdo is going to bring back the Death Penalty too. You can’t say he doesnt uphold Equality for all. When they put this on the statute it will be a Crime to be Old,Poor and Sick
One will do.
The ‘disgrace’, ‘warped principles’, ‘extraordinary hypocrisy’, and the ‘cesspit of hypocrisy, irrationality, and arcane elitism’ are all yours.
What a splendid example of nonsense! You may be justified in objecting to my tone, but hypocrisy? No, most certainly not. Irrational? Equally not so. Rather than retorting with a personal attack you might consider discussing the details of my contribution. Yours is sadly the level of much of the evidence’ and ‘reason’ surrounding the debate.
There’s quite a big difference between the two things you refer to. In one, the person wants to die. In the other, they do not.
I believe one of the Australian representatives stated that it was perfectly alright to kill a person who said “they felt like a burden” snd who stated they wanted to die, the latter before the former, as people have been known to do when they really want help.
So the response to “I want to die because I feel like a burden” will become “here is the poison” instead of an attempt to make the patient feel better about their life.
I am not an “Australian representative”, but I am an Australian. I have already resolved that if my life stops being fun, and becomes a chore (and I am the sole arbiter of whether or not that is the case), I will end my life. Fortunately I have the means to do that myself, and shouldn’t have to rely on the State. However, I feel for those people who do not have the means.
By no means true! Some lifers have begged for ‘assisted’ death. On the other hand some patients will be killed against their true wishes. The point is, yes, the state made mistakes and some people were wrongly hanged, but exactly the same will happen when the state takes charge of dying.
It’s in the same field as – your sexual relationship is only between you and the other person,it bears no relation to anyone or anything else in your life which if we dont know we soon find out is not true. Smokey Robinson may have sung “I dont care what they say’ but when he’s”mate-less” in a suffocatingly co-dependant relationship he will. Because we are social creatures even the most alienated and socially isolated of us needs to observe some social recognition and acceptance. It’s not ‘conforming”,it’s just not being a total weirdo. I think that Kim Leadbetter is another Plaster Saint like her sister the sainted and martyred Jo Cox,I still reckon there was something weird and dodgy about that assassination. I’m not claiming that weirdy man didnt do it but it was all too pat for me. Even when they are Atheists they are still Creeping Jesus’s. Too fuckin perfect. All the Wright Attitudes. I don’t want to be a burden to my family or society. Well I fuckin do!
Very good points. But those self-congratulating, selfish, and deluded supporters of assisted murder do not care. Because this is all about demonstrating their virtue-signalling liberal credentials to their tribe. Criticism or questioning demonstrates your wicked, uncaring (and probably “religious”) cruelty
“Religious cruelty”? It’s not us that venerates the image of a man nailed to a cross.
I think it is meant to be a reminder of the sacrifice rather than what you seem to think it is.
I am not a believer but even I can see that.
It’s an image of a man being tortured to death. That much is obvious. It probably tells us a lot about why Christians are so keen for people to have drawn out, painful deaths.
I am officially old. I know others who suffer from the same ailment. There are quite a lot of us. Some are religious and believe that assisted dying is offensive. There are many ‘thinkers’ who talk confidently about wanting to die rather than be a burden on family and society in general. Most have a fear of death – it makes them nervous to talk about it.
When I didn’t suffer from old age, old people were ‘others’. They were different and I couldn’t possibly be like them. They weren’t exactly a problem but they were seriously ‘other’. I don’t understand how young people can discuss an Act of Parliament about the death of these ‘others’.
Could I suggest that the discussion about the form of the Act and its safeguards ought to include input from a lot of old people?
The author makes an excellent point. Many of those of us facing the natural death of a parent or child are affected even tortured by concerns as to whether we did enough to help prolong and make easier their last months or years. How much worse to feel that we have failed in our duty when they embrace state assisted suicide.
I have encountered the despair and rage of parents against officially sanctioned and encouraged gender affirming care that deprives them of their chance to save their child from chemical castration and mutilation because it is what the child “wants”. So may relatives undergo a similar despair in the face of a similar state sanctioned destructive process that is assisted dying.
It is bizarre that the sort of people who profess to be so concerned at the feelings of offence to anyone that they wish to sanction mere words are so careless of the potential feelings of relatives of those who might be induced to commit assisted suicide.
No man is an island entire of himself. …call not for whom the bell tiles it tolls for the.
I am not entirely against assisted suicide in those cases where someone is indeed suffering from unbearable pain that cannot be alleviated and where their loved ones are agreed on the course but it is something that should be rare and difficult to obtain after looking at all alternatives not the sort of regime encouraged by the current approach of this Private Member’s Bill.
If the State is to assist suicide where the individual is unable to effect it without help why should the NHS intervene to prevent it in those who can? Is suicide only acceptable if you can persuade three others unknown to you to sanction it?
We already have assisted dying in our hospices. Quietly done by experienced, compassionate staff allowing access to methods beyond palliative care and not easily available to a citizen. It would be good to sanction this, and more importantly fund these charitable organisations. A dignified ending to suffering when the individual desires.
Totally agree UH. I have had recent experience of this with my dying mother. In fact it is probably the best form of AD that most of us would get to use, whatever the legislative framework.
Absolutely right! Another example of the totally flawed ‘reasoning’ surrounding the debate.
Suicide, in my view, whilst hardly a wonderful thing to be celebrated, should always be ‘acceptable’. People don’t get to own much without someone else trying to interfere in how they enjoy it or to levy a tax on it, but the one thing they absolutely do own is their own life.
It should be their choice, and theirs alone, what they do with it (as long as others are not harmed thereby).
And I don’t count psychological discomfort as harm.
At least with suicide, you do it yourself. With assisted suicide, you are pushing the burden on to someone else! Surely only sociopaths and psychopaths would want that job, in which case, can they be trusted to pass a fair judgment as to whether the patient is being coerced or not?
Australia and New Zealand have well thought through, legislated, and enacted policies which have been tried and tested, and are overwhelmingly supported by their populations. There’s none of the hysterical what-iffy and shrieking hyperbole of the author and commenters. It’s humane. It works. A large majority of the people of the UK are in favour. Get off your supposedly moral high horses, and stop trying to deny us the choice.
Superbly put. As an Australian, I can confirm the legislation here is working well.
Working so well there are calls for people with dementia to be “able to access it” which they surely should not be able to because don,’t you need to be “of sound mind”.
I guess some want to follow the Canadian practise in Quebec of advanced requests the kill me if I get dementia clause.
Some overseas countries are also killing anorexics.
What next I wonder. Perhaps a stated registered age of death maybe.
As an Australian, I 100% approve of the proposed change you refer to. If I ever have dementia (my mother had it), I certainly wouldn’t want to hang around.
This is almost certainly the stupidest article that I have ever seen on UnHerd. In order to access VAD, one must be terminally ill anyway. All one is trying to do is get out of some pain and suffering in the interim, which seems a perfectly sane and sensible thing to do. As to what family members think of the decision, it is frankly none of their business.
At least 60 anorexics, mainly women of course, have been killed on countries with this type of legislation. Anorexia is not a terminal illness.
Australia wants to introduce pre-dated requests for people when the get dementia.
The Netherlands, Canada and Spain allow it for non-terminal cases. All started out with “strict” terminally ill only criteria.
The bill in the UK has such weak safeguards that a person with depression would be eligible under it.
Of course anorexia is a terminal illness. Anorexia involves not eating, and if you don’t eat, you die. As to the “dementia” one, I am Australian, and I think the proposed change is an entirely good thing. As to “depression”, have you ever suffered from it? If not, who are you to say the people with it should be forced to keep living?
If this Bill is defeated it will be an important moment similar to the two referenda that were voted down here last year.