A real choice for MPs

The Private Member’s Bill put forward by Kim Leadbeater MP which seeks to introduce assisted dying into the UK is facing a tough time. It challenges so many assumptions about how we should live—and die—be they religious, ideological, clinical, professional, the list goes on. My view is that any person of sound mind should have the right to choose when to die for any reason they want and it’s nobody else’s business unless they choose to make it so. I realise that stance puts me at one end of the spectrum in this debate, which many may well find extreme. I am sure that many might argue that it’s taking individualism too far. As it stands if this bill passes, you will need to be declared terminally sick with no more than six months left to live in order to benefit from its provisions. In other words its main objective is the relief (ending) of physical pain and nothing else. That’s fine, and is wholly desirable, unless as an opponent of reform one has some sadistic wish to force someone through the horrors of a prolonged agony. Who, apart from those allied to the so-called ’right to life’ nutters might think that’s the right thing to do? On the medical treatment side I did hear an argument this morning on the radio made by a palliative care doctor who opposes the right to die that a doctor’s duty is to heal, not to facilitate death. I wish him luck, and should I get stage four cancer I would love him to heal me. But that would be beyond his ability regardless of any Hippocratic oath or indeed religious mumbo-jumbo.
 
The government should support this bill and stop pussyfooting. Governments often engage in mass assisted dying schemes, the Iraq war was one such. All members of the military when they sign up take a solemn oath to offer their lives for the their Monarch and country. There’s no great debate about being killed in action if the government has sanctioned it. But Oh Dear! Making your own choice is anathema! Even in its ragged state I hope this bill passes into law and breaks one of society’s last taboos. That last taboo is of course the very subject of death, which we’d love to believe is always somebody else's problem.