Marginal groups more likely to be coerced into assisted suicide

Legalising assisted suicide could lead to a disproportionate number of people with a disability or from an ethnic minority background seeking help to kill themselves, it has been predicted.

A Government appraisal of Lauren Edwards MP’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill reported that financial hardship and domestic abuse could result in people from these groups being more likely to want to end their own lives.

The Government also estimates that within ten years of a law  coming into effect, there will be between 1,367 to 6,257 assisted suicides in England and Wales, a jump of more than 30 per cent on its previous calculations.

Coercion

According to the equality impact assessment from the Health and Justice departments, evidence suggests that “disabled people may be more susceptible to feeling as though they are a burden on those around them”.

It added: “Pressure is not necessarily felt or applied by other people – disabled people may feel subtle pressure due to attitudinal barriers or a lack of alternative appropriate services and support. This could also include structural pressures such as neglect, poverty and difficult living conditions”.

The report also said disabled people are “twice as likely (compared with non-disabled people) to be victims of domestic abuse which includes coercive behaviour”.

It then highlighted that “people from ethnic minority backgrounds may be more susceptible to coercion” as a result of similar pressures. This, it said, could lead to “disproportionate numbers of ethnic minority people choosing to have an assisted death to avoid financial hardship or escape abuse”.

Palliative care

Writing in The Guardian recently, Labour MP and experienced surgeon Zubir Ahmed warned that a person’s wish to die “can be shaped by whether they feel supported, whether they fear becoming a burden, whether their family is coping and whether they have access to the care they need.

“That is why the state of our care systems cannot be treated as a separate issue from assisted dying. Timely access to palliative and social care remains too often determined by where someone lives rather than what they need.”

Ahmed concluded: “on 11 September, MPs will be faced with yet another vote on assisted dying before the care systems are improved to a level which even makes that debate appropriate.

“Andy Burnham has his priorities right: this is the wrong debate at the wrong time. This is why I, and many others, will be voting against this bill, in pursuit of comfort, dignity and appropriate care for people who are vulnerable and dying.”

‘Untimely distraction’

In a letter to the newspaper in support of the MP’s position, Baroness Hollins and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff branded Edwards’ Bill an “untimely distraction” and said it would draw much needed NHS resources away from palliative care provision.

They added: “Without access to adequate symptom relief and competent psychological support, you won’t have a real choice when an assisted death is both offered and delivered by the very clinicians who could and should be working to improve your quality of life.”

In July, 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”.

Edwards’ proposals, which are set to debated in the House of Commons on 11 September, would allow those in England and Wales deemed to be terminally ill and to have less than six months to live to receive help to kill themselves.