Supporters of the assisted suicide bill love a good story about a bad death. Indeed, playing on the emotions of those whose principal source of news is tabloid headlines has been a core plank of their campaigning strategy. Over the last year, anecdotes about suffering friends and relatives have been commonplace from proponents of the bill, and sure enough, the Second Reading in the House of Lords presented much of the same. Suffering, pain, and tragic circumstances should not be downplayed or minimised — these stories are not incidental, they capture the genuine experience of real people and deserve respect. However, legislation by anecdote, however heart-rending, is no replacement for the rigour and scrutiny which are pre-requisites of good law-making.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the sponsor of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in the House of Lords, introduced the bill at its Second Reading with several stories of people suffering at the end of their lives, some of whom travelled to assisted suicide clinics in other countries, others who ended their lives by different means. These deaths are clearly tragic, but stories such as these must be contextualised lest we dangerously oversimplify a very complex debate. Other perspectives matter and must be heard too.
In July, Irish mother Maureen Slough travelled to a Swiss euthanasia provider to end her life without informing her family members. Her daughter was only informed of her death by a WhatsApp message from the clinic, with Maureen’s ashes being sent home to Ireland in the post, leaving her with “a void that feels impossible to fill”. This is, sadly, not the only instance of such tragedies occurring.
In countries where assisted suicide is legal, such as Canada, similar stories are all too common. Former Paralympian Christine Gauthier asked for assistance in installing a stairlift at her home. Instead of the help she requested, Christine was offered euthanasia. This speaks to one of the more insidious and invidious aspects of changing the law: when laws make value judgements about the quality or worth of certain lives (in this case, on the basis of arbitrary criteria), society will mirror those values. Christine’s experience underscores the destabilising impact of changing the law on society’s norms and values, with the casual indifference to the moral chasm between seeking assistance to live and offering assistance to die a stark warning to us in the UK.
These are also tragic, awful anecdotes, portraying a suffering that need not be so. Despite this, the basis of forming legislation should not be founded on tallying up anecdotes from both sides of the debate, working out which are sadder, and running with that. What really matters in instances such as this, with such an emotionally charged piece of legislation, are the facts. To discern the facts, we must look at the proposed legislation itself, alongside empirical evidence from jurisdictions where similar legislation has already been enacted. This is not to be dispassionate towards hard cases, but the adage that ‘hard cases make bad law’ has stood the test of time for a reason.
And, in this instance, the facts offer a clear and compelling case that assisted suicide, if it were to become law in England and Wales, would be a disaster, just as it is everywhere else it is legal.
In Oregon, almost half of all people who have ended their lives by assisted suicide have cited feeling like a burden as a motivating factor. A similar situation exists in Canada and in Washington state, where, in 2022, the number who felt like a burden was almost three in five. In all three jurisdictions, the proportion of those citing feeling like a burden has drastically increased over time. The data for these facts comes from the providers themselves, so accusations of bias do not hold weight. This is, simply, the objective reality of living, and dying, with assisted suicide, and the reality may be far worse, as the data is based on reported cases only.
The Canadian assisted suicide and euthanasia programme, in particular, has been regarded as creating “a system of structural abandonment” where people are ending their lives due to “unmet medical or social needs”. Again, this information isn’t coming from a source guilty of cherry-picking data to sway an audience. These revelations come from two members of the Chief Coroner of Ontario’s Medical Assistance in Dying Review Committee. This is insider information that shows how such idealised legislation plays out in reality.
Those who spoke at the bill’s Second Reading in the House of Lords made it clear that the legislation was simply not fit for purpose, with a large majority speaking against the bill. This followed damning reports from two separate House of Lords Committees, one of which described the bill as being so insubstantial in parts that it constitutes “skeleton legislation”. The report also criticised the “sweeping, unspecified and unjustified powers” that it would delegate to ministers. This is yet another objective measure of just how dangerous this legislation could be.
Legislators have a duty to consider the common good. As we approach future stages of the bill, my hope is that Peers give more weight to this than to anecdotal remarks which evoke sympathy but fall short of responsible law-making. The far-reaching ramifications of the legalisation of assisted suicide for vulnerable people necessitate consideration beyond a narrow focus on rare individual cases. The facts speak resoundingly in jurisdictions around the world: assisted suicide in any form can never be made safe. We would all do well to heed the warnings.
