I hope this is the last piece I ever have to write in defence of assisted dying | Polly Toynbee
MPS, read this horror before voting today. Here is how some people slowly die, at the moment, in a deadly agony unfit for the best palliative care: “Some will return to the stench of their own rotten body. According to 2019 figures, on average 17 people per day, as indicated by palliative care professionals who see it.
The essential truth, a report by Dignity in Dying, revealed what is generally hidden from us: the last months shocking for the most unhappy. It could happen to you or me. The final vote of the common goods of the bill on the bill assisted today is not an abstract debate on slippery slopes or what God wants: to do nothing is to inflict torture to many.
Voting can be tight: private bills are not whipped are based on the implementation of deputies. At the second reading, 330 were in favor, 275 against. After 100 hours of detailed examination and many strict amendments, more than 40 MP changed in both directions. No more judge, but a panel of experts with a lawyer, a social worker and a psychiatrist will examine each request. Compromises include a four -year expectation after the royal configuration of the implementation of the service. An ITV News voting tracker expects 154 deputies to vote for this, 144 against, 22 indecisive and 21 abstentionaries.
The opponents put their tactics at the last blow. Catholic bishops have warned this week that the future of household houses and hospices would be put into “serious doubt” by legislation: “Institutions whose mission has always been to provide compassionate care in terms of illness or old age, and to provide such care until the end of life, may not have a choice, faced with these requests, to withdraw from the service of this care.” Dandinue is a polished word – Under the bill, health and social care workers can refuse involvement in the assisted death process.
God moves so mysteriously that some of his disciples hide his involvement, without publicly revealing their religious reasons to oppose. The campaign group Our duty of diligence does not mention God on his website – nor the fact that he shares an office with and is funded by evangelical groups. Membership of unsuccessful care, which manages the campaign of our duty of diligence, is largely religious. Only God orders the time of our entries and our outings. The mystery is its secret. Presumably, it is because his word cuts very little mustard in a country where 53% have no religion.
Others of faith avoid mentioning it, like Jacob Rees-Mogg on GB News, accusing the work of “a cult of death”, the work deputies “voting to finish the elderly” in the week of the “terrible vote of the House of Commons to allow the infanticide of babies in the uterus”, after the commons reduced women who ended their pregnancy. Cult of death? This seems more applicable to those who are ready to let others die in a painful agony.
But not all adversaries are religious. One of the strangests is the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPSYCH). Although the bill obliges patients to be mentally competent to request assisted death, among other objections, the RCPSYCH reminds deputies that “terminal disease is a risk factor for suicide”. This is the point – an era when suicide could be quite rational. Offering psychiatry instead of facilitated potion could be welcomed with explanatives of those of agony.
The disability groups have been convincing, fearing that they are pushed to shorten their lives, always at risk of being treated as annoying. But the ballot of disabled people shows 78% in favor of assisted death, in accordance with the rest of the population.
Scotland, Jersey and Man Island advanced before England on this subject, and France has just joined the many countries to legalize the right to die. Hundreds go to Dignitas in Switzerland: 52% of British say they would consider this dark and lonely death, but few can afford £ 15,000. About 650 suicides of dying is recorded; There may be more of these solitary and not assisted deaths.
If I appear untimely, it is the memory of the prolonged painful death of my mother: she thought that her good general practitioner would withdraw but, after the ship, he could not. No, as some hope, morphine is not a kind medicine that keeps you away – it cannot eliminate any pain. Enough people have seen bad dead that public opinion is strongly the source of the right to die.
Opponents warn people who can be pushed to faster death because they are a burden perceived for their family. To avoid inflicting suffering on those around you, it seems to me a good reason not to leave a miserable memory of your last months. Knowing that it is an option, even if it is never used, will comfort many many terminal diagnoses. What if, opponents continue to warn, is someone in a hurry in it? Everything is a balance between risks: define the absolute certainty of some horrible deaths against the possibility that a dying person can lose a few months of life. What is the worst?
While the work reaches a year in power, this vote should join the decriminalization of abortion this week like another important step in the long history of personal freedoms which is always the legacy of the party. While Harold Wilson has never personally defended the long list of Roy Jenkins radical reforms, Keir Starmer nowirely supported the two bills. If he passes, he goes to the Lords, where 26 bishops will do the most damned to stop him, reminding us why they should be withdrawn with the heretaries. I have often written for many years to the right to die when we choose. I hope I will no longer need it.
