Parliament has been urged to halt the ‘assisted suicide programme’ and prioritise helping disabled people to live instead.
In an open letter, campaigners called on Andy Burnham and MPs to vote against Lauren Edwards MP’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill and rather work to ensure that disabled and terminally ill people “have as much support to live”, as her proposals “would provide for us to die”.
Signatories to the letter, coordinated by Assist Us To Live, include actors Liz Carr and Ruth Madeley, disabled Peer Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, and academics Dr Kevin Yuill and Professor David Jones.
‘Lives at risk’
The campaign group, along with its allies, states that “the only safe way to reduce suffering at the end of life is to reform the social and palliative care systems” before even considering allowing people to get help from doctors to kill themselves.
Outlining its concerns, Assist Us To Live explains: “At the moment, sick and disabled people, including terminally ill people, are denied choice over the most basic of things: our ability to get out of bed, wash, eat, leave our houses or manage our pain.
“This creates a coercive environment where people will choose an earlier death simply because they are being failed by society. Put simply, introducing assisted dying in these circumstances will put sick and disabled people’s lives at risk.”
The letter concludes: “No one wants any terminally ill person to suffer unnecessarily at death. But we must protect the lives and rights of disabled and terminally ill people in life. We urge you to hear our voices, understand our fears and work with us to create a system that is safe for all: one that assists us to live.”
Crisis
Bioethicist Professor David Jones recently warned that Edwards’ Bill, set to be debated in the House of Commons on 11 September, could see a “significant number” of hospices and care homes close.
The Bill’s failure to allow for “institutional conscientious objection”, he argued, poses “an existential threat to any institutions whose foundation documents are incompatible with participation in the act of intentionally ending human life”.
He contended: “The Bill threatens not only the right to life of vulnerable patients but also harms all who would want to be cared for in safe spaces where assisted suicide would neither be offered nor be performed. It would leave them with nowhere to turn.”
Last month, the Prime Minister called for palliative and social care funding to be prioritised over debates on whether to legalise assisted suicide. He told Sky News that “it is very challenging to introduce that wider debate in a context of people not receiving that care and having the peace of mind about that care”.
Doctors: ‘Assisted suicide is not medical treatment’
Dawn French: ‘I worry that the poor will suffer most under assisted suicide’