Press Release – FET Raises Alarm About Impact of Assisted Suicide on the Family

The Family Education Trust has raised alarm about the deleterious effects assisted suicide would have on the family, as evidenced by a new second edition of research and analysis by FET’s Director Peter D. Williams – False Autonomy and Hobson’s Choice – How ‘Assisted Dying’ Harms the Family – in light of the passing of a Bill seeking to legalise that practice in Scotland and ahead of a similar vote in Westminster on Friday.

Last night, the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill passed its First Stage vote in the Scottish Parliament. The Bill, introduced by Liam McArthur MSP, if carried through the entire legislative process would introduce assisted suicide into Scottish law and medicine.

Though it is ostensibly limited to those who are ‘terminally ill’, the McArthur Bill defines terminal illness as ‘an advanced and progressive disease, illness or condition from which they are unable to recover’ and which ‘can reasonably be expected to cause their premature death’. Williams’s analysis shows that this would covers a range of common incurable chronic illnesses and physical impairments, which could be alleviated by treatment and enable years of further happy life for those patients suffering from it, including diabetes, ‘long’ COVID-19 and Down’s syndrome.

Ahead of the vote on the similar but more ostensibly restrictive Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in Westminster on Friday, Williams analyses the Leadbeater and McArthur Bills and the Oregon model on which they are based shows the deleterious effects of such proposals on family relationships and solidarity, the profound dangers inherent in even the most minimal system of medicalised suicide, the gross insufficiency of ‘safeguards’ to obviate abuse, and the inevitable even if incremental extension of assisted suicide to wider cohorts of people than first envisaged. It has also surveyed where this leads to in the darker situations of Belgian, Canadian and Dutch euthanasia.

Peter D. Williams, FET Director, said:

‘Whilst the principle of receiving or preventing suffering is laudable, the consistent evidence shows the tragic reality of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The corruption of culture engendered by assisted suicide and euthanasia necessarily includes the relationships that family members have towards their elderly, sick and weaker relatives. When we encourage and further enable vulnerable people who are at their lowest ebb of personal strength and autonomy to feel a ‘burden’ on others, and perhaps denies them the analgesic access and holistic palliative care that they need, such an option is not a real choice but a ‘Hobson’s Choice’ – an apparent set of options where only one is truly palatable or presented.

If we are serious about creating a society in which all may flourish and be protected, then this must be one that rejects doctor involvement in enabling or causing the death of their patients, and embraces not only a comprehensive extension and greater enhancement of compassionate treatment for those in pain or distress, but a culture in which everyone is made to feel valued and loved up until their dying breath.’