Dignity in Dying

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The case for a new law on assisted dying is overwhelming if you ask me and it's the politicians who are badly out of step with public opinion, according to this report in The Times.

While opponents base their opposition on practical issues such as ensuring safeguards to protect the vulnerable (a point on which no one disagrees), everyone knows that their real objection is religious based on the 'sanctity' of human life.

Well I respect their religious views while not sharing them.

So why should I be bound by an outlook on life and death that I don't believe in myself and what right do these people think they have in trying to impose their views on me? 

None whatsoever which is why it's high time the law was changed to allow people in very difficult circumstances to bring their lives to an end at a time of their own choosing.   


Four in five voters would back a new law for assisted dying


The poll found that 82 per cent support assisted dying Andrew Winning/Reuters

By Rosemary Bennett - The Times

Support for assisted dying is now overwhelming, according to the latest opinion poll which found that more than four out of five people want to see a change in the law.

The Populus poll of 5,000 adults, one of the biggest ever conducted, found that 82 per cent want to give terminally ill, mentally competent people the legal option to end their lives, with 44 per cent saying that they would risk prison and break the law to help a loved one die in such circumstances. Previous polls have found that about three quarters of the public back legally assisted dying.

The poll comes as Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the former lord chancellor, told The Times that he planned to bring back his bill to make assisted dying legal as soon as the new parliament is formed in May. The bill won two key votes in the Lords but ran out of time. Under its terms, doctors would be able to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to anyone terminally ill with less than six months to live who made a request.

Lord Falconer has already submitted the bill to the Peers’ ballot for the next session. He predicted that the law would change in the next five years because more and more people would disregard it to help loved ones. “The proportion of people who think the law is wrong is huge. Most people are complying with it, but over 40 per cent say they would disobey it and there is no point having a law that nobody respects any more,” he said.

While no prosecutions have been brought against relatives of the 100 or so Britons who have ended their lives at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, Lord Falconer said that he believed that the matter was too important to be left to the police or courts. It has also led to a situation where it appears to be fine to help a loved one to die as long as they go abroad, he added. Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, president of the Supreme Court, has urged parliament to address the matter urgently.

According to the most recent guidance from the Department of Public Prosecutions, a prosecution will only be brought if a doctor or carer could have exerted some influence on the victim to request that their life should end. Campaigners say this does not offer enough protection.

The Lords voted twice on Lord Falconer’s bill, both times finding in favour of legal change, the first time this has happened. “My feeling is the Lords were responding to public opinion,” Lord Falconer said.

Many high-profile opponents of assisted dying have changed their minds in recent years. Lord Carey of Clifton, the former archbishop of Canterbury, said that he could no longer accept the “needless suffering” of those in great pain, while Desmond Tutu has also lent his support to the cause.

Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir Chris Woodhead, the former head of Ofsted, who both have motor neurone disease, have also both recently backed assisted dying.

However, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has called the bill “mistaken and dangerous” and the medical profession is also strongly against any change in the law, believing that it would place doctors in an untenable position.

The poll, carried out for the campaign group Dignity in Dying, found strong support across the political spectrum. Among Conservative supporters, 83 per cent would back a change in the law, compared with 79 per cent of Labour supporters.

Alistair Thompson, a spokesman for the Care not Killing campaign, which opposes the bill, said: “ We can see why it is bad for people to suffer but the fact remains there are no safe systems of assisted suicide anywhere in the world.”

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