The life and death by starvation of the right-to-die campaigner, Debbie Purdy, should be celebrated by the Commons passing the House of Lords’ “dignity in dying” bill forthwith. An overwhelming majority of the public – 60-70% – wants it. The weight of legal and ethical opinion wants it. Eighty of the great and good writing to the Daily Telegraph at the weekend want it. There is no reason beyond indolence and political obtuseness that stops the Commons ending the medieval practice of jailing those who wish to help loved ones to die.
That two terminally ill people a month go to Switzerland to end their lives and 10 times that number kill themselves surreptitiously at home is a poor comment on modern Britain. It puts the country on a par with American creationism and Irish anti-abortionism.
The familiar objections to assisted dying are rigorously met in Lord Falconer’s bill imposing medical and judicial “safeguards on choice”. It merely awaits passage.
The objections cannot outweigh the human right to control the circumstances of one’s own death, circumstances searingly described by Dr Atul Gawande in the recent Reith lectures. Indeed, objection is largely confined to religious prejudice and medical authoritarianism, to those who hold that the state and the professions should hold sway over individual freedom and dignity.
The House of Commons has plenty of time. It recently gave itself an extra day off a week as there was too little legislation for it to consider. Yet it can pass a law in a day if it wants to, as it did last July when it gave the government emergency powers to access phone and internet records in “the war on terror”. Otherwise, said the home secretary Theresa May, “innocent people may die”. It is appalling that parliament can utter such state-serving drivel rather than a law desired, discussed and in the interests of thousands of desperate citizens.
Purdy’s husband thanked the Marie Curie hospice in Bradford for helping his wife through the awful experience of self-starvation forced on her by parliament. How much better if he were now able to thank parliament for relieving others of having to face the same ordeal.
