Patricia Hewitt, the former Health Secretary, has begun a campaign to “gain the legal right for people to assist their own death”, reports The Times. During her time as Health Secretary she read many accounts of people’s suffering, and was prompted to consider how she would respond in a similar situation of crippling illness.  She commenced this campaign after realising that, although she does not know what she would do in those circumstances, she would want to have the choice.

This is an understandable conclusion to come to, after reading what were undoubtedly harrowing accounts of people’s suffering. Indeed, in the light of any single story about a person enduring pain before their inevitable death, any opposition to assisted suicide can appear callous and uncaring.  However, the argument for assisted suicide  is almost exclusively based on a small number of hard cases – cases that can and should be dealt with by redoubling our efforts to care for those involved.  And as the cliche goes, hard cases make bad law.

Unfortunately, as so often, the Times article makes no reference to the potential consequences for the entire UK population of disabled / elderly people if assisted suicide became legal. A change in the law would remove the assumption that every life is valuable, without discrimination. As a result, only lives fulfilling certain criteria would be deemed to have value.  Instead of the right to life being an overarching principle in our society, the ‘right’ to die would battle for precedence. And contrary to the unfounded assurances of ‘safeguards’ by the assisted suicide lobby, a right to die would quickly degrade into a duty to die. And in a society that devalues life, and already talks about disabled and elderly people with reference to cost (eg: “burden on the NHS”), in a decade or two decisions on whether to choose death or not could quite conceivably take cost into consideration.

For example, imagine the case of an older woman suffering from motor neurone disease  and requiring nursing home care. Her savings may have to be used to pay for care costs, which can be hugely expensive. She knows that the longer she lives, the less savings she will have to pass onto her family. Despite wanting to live her life out, if assisted suicide was legal, an unavoidable question would hang over her:  should she choose to die? Even in the most loving families, with the selflessness that so many of the older generation display, it is easy to imagine people in this position, though not wanting to die, ‘choosing’ death for the sake of their family.

The moment you remove the assumption that all life is innately valuable by legalising euthanasia in any form, you create a list that defines when a life no longer has intrinsic value. And every person falling into that category, whether they want this or not, finds the question poised above their head: “Will you choose to die?”

Over the past few years the UK has been whipped into a state of compassion for the ‘brave’ individuals who speak out loudly for their right to die. But we forget that these people are the extreme minority. It is the rest of those in similar circumstances, whose voice is perhaps considerably weaker, for whom a legalised ‘right to die’ would annihilate their already fragile right to live. And it is them that we forget in our national ‘debate’ about assisted suicide – they are rarely given a voice in the national press.

It is absolutely unacceptable for a society to put its weakest and most vulnerable people in this position – where the validity of their very existence is brought into question. Because many of these people are the very people who would choose to die, not out of a ‘right to choose’, but out of a sense of obligation to a society that no longer perceives their life as innately valuable.

Mrs Hewitt has read of certain tragic cases and seeks to provide an answer.  But in considering only the needs, or perceived needs, of these relatively isolated individuals  she has overlooked the need to protect the vast majority of disabled and elderly people who rely on our current laws to affirm and protect their precious right to life.

See also The Telegraph and The Guardian

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