This isn’t about shortening life, but the right to shorten death

AFTER 14 months of submissions and discussions, I hoped the health and social care committee would have provided a stronger viewpoint on assisted dying.

That they’ve stated the question is ‘when’ and not ‘if’ we will see a change in law to permit the option of assisted dying is a nod in the right direction.

But, while other countries in Europe and beyond have tackled this controversial topic, the British people remain in the dark as to whether their elected Parliamentarians favour legislation or not.

MPs cannot duck their basic duty to engage with this issue any longer.

At a recent meeting I addressed a group of about 100 opponents of assisted dying, most of whom expressed serious concerns about potential abuses of a compassionate law, fearing that sick and elderly people might be hurried to their graves.

I told them: ‘I understand your concerns but let me ask you one thing – if you yourself were dying in great pain, would you like to have the option of an assisted death yourself?’

A hundred hands shot up. If we want that option for ourselves, we have no right to deny it to others.

For a long time I had my own reservations. These ebbed away, largely because of my work as a rabbi visiting people at the end of their lives in hospices.

Some were fortunate enough to have what we all hope for, a good and peaceful death, but I have seen too many others dying in great pain – long past any chance of a cure, and desperate for anything that will end their agony.

And I mean physical pain. While mental health disorders can seem bleak to those who suffer them, I cannot advocate for cases like the 29-year-old woman who ended her life in the Netherlands, a country in which assisted dying is legal. In 2018, Aurelia Brouwers drank a fatal poison under the supervision of doctors because she could no longer bear her psychiatric illness. Depression and anxiety can be debilitating but we shouldn’t lose faith that those conditions cannot be cured, or at least improved.

Assisted dying should be reserved for those who have been given six months to live, like the man with stomach cancer I met who was in so much pain that he knelt on his bed, doubled over with his head on his knees, while his wife sat beside him unable to ease his misery.

And only a few days ago, I visited a woman who movingly told me, ‘Every night I pray to God that I won’t wake up in the morning. And every morning I’m disappointed.’

Some religious opponents of assisted dying insist that we should not be ‘playing God’. But isn’t that exactly what doctors do, when they help people to recover from heart attacks and strokes instead of leaving them to die? And in that case, isn’t it right that we should offer the option of a merciful death when there’s nothing else to be done?

Public perceptions have changed, largely thanks to campaigning by celebrities such as Dame Esther Rantzen, who is indefatigable in her demands for a parliamentary debate on assisted dying, and Dame Prue Leith, who made a powerful TV documentary on the subject.

JONATHAN Dimbleby added his voice to the calls this week, following the death of his younger brother Nicholas from motor neurone disease. These are mature, trusted spokesmen and spokeswomen. They command respect.

So too does the evidence from places such as oregon in the US, which became the first American state to legalise the practice. Their laws are the model for what is being proposed here.

In oregon, tens of thousands of people have applied for the right to die – not as an immediate course of action, but as an option to them for when their medical condition becomes intolerable, acting as an emotional safety net.

That’s what assisted dying is really about: having the choice, alongside traditional palliative care, with appropriate safeguards put in place.

This isn’t about shortening life – it’s the option of shortening death.