New Report by the Family Education Trust Shows How ‘Assisted Dying’ Harms The Family

On Friday, the House of Commons will debate the issue of assisted suicide through Kim Leadbeater MP’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.

In the newest FET Report, our Director Peter D. Williams critiques the system of assisted suicide (where a physician provides lethal drugs to a qualifying patient to end their own life) proposed by the Bill, including the purported safeguards of eligibility criteria and procedural gatekeeping.

He also looks at the evidence from Oregon, which is the model the Leadbeater Bill is following, showing that the eligibility criteria there have over time led to application to normally non-terminal conditions such anorexia, diabetes, hernias, and arthritis, due to their becoming ‘artificially terminal’ by human action or inaction rather than the inevitable progression of the disease. He argues that for more ‘ordinary’ cases, six-month prognoses are in any case very unreliable, and the danger will exist that hundreds if not thousands of people would have their lives ended prematurely, even by a matter of years, if the Bill were passed into law.

Williams argues that the procedural gatekeeping meanwhile relies on a system whereby the patient seeking to procure an assisted suicide would make two declarations followed by ‘periods of reflection’ (altogether 21 days) and two doctors would assess that they are making an autonomous decision free of duress, followed by a High Court Judge confirming the procedure has been followed. Nothing however sets how the doctors would know (certainly in 3 weeks) how to detect undue pressure or coercion in the patient, even with psychological training. As such, the inclusion of a High Court Judge (putting aside the consequences for the judiciary in being given this responsibility) would only be an added layer of bureaucracy without any ability to safeguard.

Williams points out recent medical history (e.g. scandals surrounding Stafford Hospital and the Liverpool Care Pathway) showing how abuses in the UK medical system is possible, and is worsened by the potential for doctor-shopping amongst a minority of doctors who would be providing assisted suicide – by definition those with the fewest qualms and least scruples about doing so.

He concludes that the Leadbeater Bill, like all proposals of assisted suicide and euthanasia, is dangerous, contrary to true principles safeguarding, and would undermine the integrity of family relationships.

For more, be sure to read the Report here!