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WillowOne's Positions

Assisted Dying

My Positions

  1. A mentally competent adult who is terminally ill, or whose suffering is unbearable and cannot be relieved, should be able to obtain medical help to die at a time of their own choosing, under safeguards.
  2. The "sanctity of life" objection is a religious doctrine and should carry no weight in law for people who do not share it. Those who do share it are free to decline, and that is the whole of what their belief entitles them to.
  3. The slippery-slope objection is empirical, and should be answered with evidence from the places that have legislated. That evidence is largely reassuring, and where it is not (the expansion of the Canadian scheme) it is a warning that should shape the safeguards, not a reason to deny the principle.

Notes

  1. The law. Assisting a suicide in England and Wales carries up to fourteen years under the Suicide Act 1961. In practice the prosecutors have declined to charge relatives who accompany a dying person to Switzerland, which means the right exists for those who can afford a flight to Zürich and the strength to take it while they still can, and for nobody else. The courts have said repeatedly, most clearly in 2014, that the matter is for Parliament. In 2025 the Commons passed a bill to allow assisted dying for adults with six months or less to live, and at the time of writing it was before the Lords, where the bishops sit by right and have opposed every previous attempt. Scotland, Jersey and the Isle of Man have moved in the same direction.
  2. The evidence from elsewhere. Oregon has had a Death with Dignity Act since 1997. Fewer than one per cent of deaths use it, a third of those who obtain the prescription never take it, and a 2007 study found no evidence of disproportionate use by the poor, the disabled, the uninsured, the elderly or any other group feared to be vulnerable. The Netherlands and Belgium have had broader laws since 2002 without the collapse predicted. Australia's states and New Zealand have legislated since 2019 with no reported pattern of abuse. Switzerland has permitted assisted suicide for non-selfish motives since 1942. The opponents' prediction has been tested in a dozen jurisdictions for a quarter of a century and has largely failed.
  3. Canada. Canada's scheme, introduced in 2016 for the terminally ill, was widened in 2021 to people whose death is not foreseeable, and now accounts for close to five per cent of all deaths; cases have been reported of people seeking it for poverty or lack of housing, and an extension to mental illness has twice been postponed. This is the serious case for the opposition and it deserves a serious answer, which is that Canada removed the terminal-illness requirement and I would not. The lesson is to write the safeguard into the statute, as Oregon did, not to abandon the people the statute is for.
  4. The objections. Sanctity of life: a theological claim, which I do not hold (Life After Death), and which should not bind those who do not hold it any more than the Jehovah's Witness view of blood binds the rest of us. Pressure on the vulnerable: the real concern, answered by capacity assessments, independent doctors, waiting periods, oversight and reporting, and by the data, which show the typical applicant is educated, insured and insistent. Palliative care instead: a false choice. Fund palliative care fully, and there will remain a small number of people whose suffering it cannot reach and who want to go. The two are complements, and the countries with assisted dying have some of the best palliative care in the world. Doctors should not kill: the medical bodies in Britain have moved from opposition to neutrality, and no doctor would be compelled.
  5. The principle. It is my life, and the manner of its ending, under conditions that I can foresee and would not choose, is the last decision in it. The state has no business in that decision beyond making sure it is mine, which is the same reasoning I apply to abortion at the other end. It is also consistent with my opposition to the death penalty: the objection there is to the state taking a life against the person's will, and the whole point here is the will. Suffering is not redemptive, there is no one keeping score, and a good death is the one the person dying would have chosen.

Sources

  • Suicide Act 1961, section 2
  • R (Nicklinson) v Ministry of Justice [2014] UKSC 38
  • Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, UK Parliament — https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3774
  • Oregon Health Authority, Death with Dignity Act Annual Reports
  • Battin, M. P. et al., "Legal physician-assisted dying in Oregon and the Netherlands: evidence concerning the impact on patients in 'vulnerable' groups", Journal of Medical Ethics 33 (2007)
  • Health Canada, Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada, 2023 (2024)

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