Legal assisted dying: the arguments

I AGREE in part with Boris Johnson’s reservations about changing the legal rules on assisted dying (Mail). However, I believe everyone has the right to decide when they have had enough of living with whatever medical issues they have.

It is easy to mitigate any pressure that may be applied by enabling each person to state, at an age when they fully aware, what criteria would have to exist for them to be humanely helped.

It is not the business of the Church or anyone else to tell me at what point in my life I would wish to be helped to die humanely. That is between me and my doctor and can easily be entered in my medical records.

There are far too many people in the UK who wish they could end it all. If those people were animals, we would help them. Well, humans are animals. And if they wish to die, there is no reason why they should not be assisted to do so.

KAREN MOORE, Derby.

A CHILLING aspect of the pro camp’s argument for assisted dying is the language of compassion. In Canada, where euthanasia has grown rapidly since its introduction in 2016, a 27-year-old autistic woman was recently granted her wish to die, against the wishes of her father. In Belgium, a 22-year-old who suffered from PTSD after surviving a 2016 terrorist attack was also helped to die. This is the door that will open if we allow an assisted suicide law.

The current debate is one-sided, with anecdotes of the terminally ill suffering intractable pain. If that is the case, palliative care needs to be improved and extended. Death is not the answer to life’s suffering and, make no mistake, vulnerable people will be under psychological pressure to opt for it so as not to be a so-called burden on their family and the state. Canada has further considered extending its death solution to the mentally ill. How compassionate. I dread the consequences of having such a law on the UK statute books.

LINDA PAYNE, New Ash Green, Kent.