Kevin Yuill

The disturbing campaign to legalise assisted dying

(Photo: Getty)

Assisted dying looks closer than ever to becoming law in the United Kingdom. Both the House of Lords and the Scottish parliament have recently discussed proposals for it and polling suggests eight out of ten people in Britain favour a change to the law. 

It is hard not to agree that people should have the option to end their lives. But assisted dying should not be treated as a glorified painkiller. Though campaigners are undoubtedly sincere in their desire to alleviate distress, the history of the assisted dying campaign suggests that often there are those with a more worrying goal: the use of assisted dying to create a more ‘efficient’ society.

Assisted dying should not be treated as a glorified painkiller

Campaigners claim assisted dying should be reserved solely for the terminally ill and mentally competent. But those countries in which it has already been legalised have seen its availability expanded, with worrying implications for how we treat the sick, disabled and elderly.

Canada legalised medically assisted death five years ago, but new legislation has already repealed safeguards requiring a person’s natural death be ‘reasonably foreseeable’. Disabled people could now be euthanised. Belgium legalised euthanasia in 2002. It is now available for terminally ill children. The Netherlands also legalised assisted dying in 2002. Two decades on, it is already now accessible to those suffering from blindness, tinnitus, autism, dementia and mental illness. Extending access to healthy over-75s has already been proposed. Ever-widening obtainability is an inevitable consequence of treating euthanasia as only another way of reducing pain.

The leading campaign group for legalising assisted dying in the UK are Dignity in Dying. They first emerged as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society in 1936. The voluntary part was a concession designed to help assisted dying legislation through parliament, but economic concerns featured predominantly when it was debated in the 1930s.

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