This is a revised up to date version of our Frequently Asked Questions and Answer Sheet. Hope it proves useful.
Q.1 Campaigners for ‘assisted dying’ in the UK say they want to change the law for terminally ill people, not for people with disabilities. So why should people with disabilities feel threatened by the campaigning?
A. Terminal illness and disability are not mutually exclusive. Many people who are terminally ill are disabled people of one sort or another as well. Many long-term conditions, like (for example, Parkinson’s or MS, which involve disabilities can be life-shortening and can have successive ups and downs throughout their course. During any one of these ups and downs it would be possible for a doctor to say that the person concerned could be ‘reasonably expected’ to die within six months. Yet they are not terminally ill.
Q2 But why shouldn’t mentally competent adults who are seriously ill and suffering have the choice of physician-assisted suicide if they want it. After all, no one is going to be forced to have it?
A. Assisting a suicide is a serious matter. The law we have is there to protect us from malicious pressure or manipulation by others, who may have an interest in seeing us dead, and from ourselves too – from harming ourselves because we are depressed or feel a burden on others. It’s all very well to talk glibly about being mentally competent, but serious illness and disability are stressful experiences. It’s one thing to say whether someone who wants to ‘end it all’ is compos mentis, but it’s perfectly possible to be compos mentis and still be suffering from depression. The so-called safeguards that are being talked about may sound reassuring to the layman, but the reality is very different..
Q3. But isn’t it true to say that legalised assisted suicide is working well in Oregon?
A. No, it isn’t! The number of deaths annually in Oregon from legalised assisted suicide is now between six and seven times the number when the law came into force. Oregon’s current death rate from this source would lead to over 1,500 assisted suicides a year in England and Wales if we had a similar law here. And there is no sign of this rising trend coming to an end. Then there is the practice of ‘doctor shopping’ – people asking their doctors for assisted suicide but being refused and going from one doctor to another until they find a compliant one , who knows little about them beyond their case notes and who is, by definition, someone who may see suicide as a reasonable response to terminal illness. And recent research has shown that some people suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression are getting through the net in Oregon and being given suicide drugs to end their lives. Is this the sort of thing we want to see happening here in Britain?
The campaigning groups claim there has been no abuse of Oregon’s law and no demand for its extension. But there is no system in place in Oregon to scrutinise how requests for assisted suicide are being handled. It is impossible to know therefore whether there has been abuse. Moreover, we are now seeing attempts in the Oregon legislature to extend the definition of terminal illness to include people with an estimated 12 months to live.
Q4. Public opinion supports a change in the law. What right have you to oppose it?
A. Public opinion supported going to war in 1914 and appeasement in the 1930s; and opinion polls now regularly show support for the return of capital punishment and banning all immigration. You can’t safely decide complex and controversial issues like this on the basis of opinion polls. And, when you examine opinion poll results carefully, you often see that they do not say what the campaigning groups claim.
Moreover, surveys of doctors – the people who know what ‘assisted suicide’ means and who would be in the front line if it were to be legalised – show that the majority are opposed to legalisation and that only around one in seven would be prepared to have anything to do with it.
It’s all very well asking people hypothetical questions in opinion polls. As a select committee on ‘assisted dying’ was told by experts five years ago, most people know little about the subject apart from the sensationalist stories they read in the press and their responses can often be ‘kneejerk’ reactions to loaded questions about ‘choice’ and ‘suffering’. But, as people with disabilities, we are the people in the firing line who would be put at risk if the law were to be changed.
Q5. But isn’t the law as it stands cruel?
A. The law that we have has a stern face but an understanding heart. It holds serious penalties in reserve to deter abuse and manipulation. But, where assisted suicide does occur, the Crown Prosecution Service looks at the evidence carefully and, where it is clear that assistance has been reluctant and in response to persistent requests by a suffering individual, charges are not brought. It combines deterrence with compassion: it gives us the best of both worlds.
What the campaigners want to do is to replace this with a licensing system in advance. But enabling laws have a habit of encouraging the acts they enable. And, in any case, once an act of assisted suicide had been licensed, who is to say that no coercion or pressure has been applied before the act is actually carried out.
