Mr Bill Esterson MP
Sefton Central
Merseyside
Dear Mr Esterson,
ASSISTED DYING BILL
As you prepare to debate the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Commons, I write to ask you to consider very carefully the wording of the Title given to the Bill, since I believe it is seriously, if not deliberately, misleading.
The purpose of the Bill, as is made unambiguously clear in all its detailed provisions, is to make it legally possible for someone to end their life at a time, and in a manner, of their own choosing. This, in any other context, will be recognised and understood as suicide, which is defined legally and in any dictionary as: “the act of ending one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally”.
The author and supporters of this Bill need to be challenged to explain and justify their reasons for not presenting it for what it is. They want to change the law that criminalises certain forms of suicide. This is clear from the care being taken to hedge it around with the strictest possible safeguards and restrictions. Certain persons, for reasons which are understandable, want to be allowed to end their suffering by ending their life. The Bill, if passed, will allow them to do that, and protect those who assist them from being prosecuted for doing so.
Surely, any scrutiny of this Bill must begin by recognising and addressing the central legal point that is at issue: viz. the need to amend the law criminalising suicide by allowing certain carefully specified circumstances in which it can be accepted that to assist a person to end their life in such circumstances would be a humane, and not a criminal, act.
I suggest that the unwillingness to present this Bill as a proposed amendment to the law criminalising suicide is explained by the likelihood that it would make its passage much more difficult. Hence the preference for the more persuasive “Assisted Dying”. But this needs to be called out for what it is: a dishonest fudge. There is a clear and unambiguous distinction between assisting someone to die ‘by their own hand’ and assisting someone to die ‘when their time comes’. “Assisted Dying” is already provided for by Hospice Care, which provides care for “people from the point at which their illness is diagnosed as terminal to the end of their life, however long that may be”.
Honesty requires that this Bill be renamed as Assisted Suicide Bill, and debated as an amendment to existing legislation: Suicide Act 1961, Section 2.
There is another major objection which must count against this Bill, whatever it is called. If Parliament takes it upon itself to authorise the taking of life, and to protect anyone assisting someone to do so, it will be subordinating the Law to the sovereignty of the individual. The principle will have been conceded: the right to life is an individual right, and if an individual decides that they no longer wish to live that is their right, over which no Law can claim to have a say.
Objections to any change in the law prohibiting the taking of life usually focus on dire warnings about its consequences, edging onto a slippery slope from which there will be no escape. But the debate needs first of all to be, not about consequences, but about an individual’s claim to sovereignty over their life. Once such sovereignty is granted, and in certain extreme cases it is accepted that the individual is above the law and not only may, but has the right, to end their life, the debate needs to be about the purpose and status of Law as such, and not just about dire consequences if an exception is allowed.
In short, once Parliament concedes the principle of the sovereignty of an individual’s right to determine the circumstances in which they can end their life, then any restrictions and safeguards included in the Bill, however closely argued and strongly worded, will prove to be academic and temporary, counting for nothing once a majority can be found to have them removed.
Sincerely,
[Rev] John J McCluskey mhm MA PhD
