The insidious romanticising of assisted suicide

A double suicide is in the news for the second time in a week.

The first was the Kessler sisters, aged 89, who had an assisted suicide in Germany. Articles regaled readers with tales of their showbiz life, dancing and singing around Europe. Each news outlet showed pictures of the two together and smiling, inseparable all their days until the end. The tone is sweet, optimistic, positive. The papers make clear that this is what the sisters wanted, a choice they agreed upon together. No hint of foul play, but also no hint of any terminal illness or pain. They simply decided they did not want to live any more, and the state did not stand in their way.

The second was Mr and Mrs Jeffcock. As assisted suicide is not legal in the UK, they took their lives by other means after sending a letter to their solicitor explaining their intentions of the suicide pact. Stock images used in the article showed an elderly couple holding hands, another saw a couple embracing in the sunlight. It was emphasised how they loved each other, and that their lack of extended family made this seem a reasonable, even sensible decision to make. While David Jeffcock, 80, had bone cancer, his wife, 74, was healthy and well.

It seems like, as with the tale of Romeo and Juliet, people sigh over the romance and blot from their memory its true genre: tragedy.

Encouraging copycat behaviour

Why is suicide being glamourised? Nothing in the newspapers explicitly endorse the act, but the pictures and the tone makes it feel like a double suicide is a fairytale ending to a wonderful story.

Currently, the UK’s press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) states in its Editors’ Code of Practice: “When reporting suicide, to prevent simulative acts care should be taken to avoid excessive detail of the method used, while taking into account the media’s right to report legal proceedings.” And the National Union of Journalists’ guidelines for reporting on suicide states that writers should not ‘sensationalise’ the issue.

The horrible truth these regulations point to is that reading stories about suicides can encourage others to take the same action and kill themselves.

If the method of death is given in detail, people may copy it. If the suicide is painted as some kind of ‘heroic choice’ or ‘act of devotion’ rather than a terrible tragedy, as these double suicides have been, someone out there reading it, living through their darkest moments, may see it as a path for themselves.

Worse still, these news stories do not characterise the Kessler sisters or Mr and Mrs Jeffcock as being in a state of depression. Instead, their decision to end their lives together was presented as sober-minded – a choice of little consequence that any rational person with all their faculties might reasonably consider. Rather than killing themselves, they might as well have been going on holiday.

Advertising

As the House of Lords and Holyrood consider legislation that would legalise assisted suicide on our shores, we stand on the brink of such stories becoming commonplace.

Suicide is a tragedy. The mere existence of these double suicides is testament to that. In both situations, at least one healthy individual agreed to take their own life, because they felt that continuing to live following the death or suicide of the other would be unbearable. This is coercion. We do not know whether that pressure came from within or without, but it is coercion nonetheless. For news outlets to pretend it was anything else is reckless and will inevitably put more lives at risk by pretending suicide is a legitimate choice that doesn’t impact anyone else.

Anyone who has lost a friend or family member to suicide knows how devastating it can be, and how difficult it is to heal after suffering such loss.

Dignity in Dying, though, delights in promoting stories of people chosing assisted suicide, because they further its goals of unleashing euthanasia upon our nation. If these news articles were irresponsible, remember that just before the vote in the House of Commons, the campaign group paid for adverting posters glamourising assisted suicide on the London tube network, a location known for people committing suicide.

A number for a suicide prevention helpline was included at the bottom of one of the articles, but if these Bills are passed, campaigners will be desperate to remove any kind of ‘stigma’ around assisted suicide. It does not take much to imagine such disclaimers and hotlines will inevitably be replaced by adverts for assisted dying on the NHS.