The country should vote on whether or not to legalise assisted dying

SIR – There has been much recent correspondence on assisted dying, with views for and against. As 2024 may well be an election year, surely it is the ideal opportunity to have this settled by a majority. A referendum on the basic principle of allowing assisted dying should be included as part of the voting process. Not to allow this would be, I believe, an affront to democracy. I call for MPS to introduce the question as soon as they return to the Commons.

Arthur Bayley

Tyldesley, Lancashire

SIR – I have always been torn in this debate. However, Elaine Watson’s powerful and moving letter (December 30) about the painful death of her husband has changed my view, which is surely what this newspaper is about.

Andy Crooks

Newtownards, Co Down

SIR – Charles Moore (Comment, December 23) highlights that “assisted dying” may not be a suitable term for euthanasia, but that doesn’t make it “assisted suicide” either.

Euthanasia is hardly the equivalent of a doctor or relative of a person with suicidal impulses handing them a tub of pills for an overdose. It is allowing a terminally ill person, who has weighed all other options, to have a choice over the manner and timing of their death.

There is a clear difference between helping someone who is terminally ill to die and helping someone to die who is not.

SIR – David Milne KC’S logic (Letters, December 27) is not easy to follow.

First, he fails to explain why legalising assisting suicide would not be an endorsement of it (it would).

Secondly, he writes that it would be just as accurate to claim that the current law is endorsing the suffering of those who would want such assistance. This does not follow. The law’s prohibition on assisting suicide aims to discourage suicide, not to promote suffering. Indeed, the law requires doctors to palliate terminal suffering, even if so doing shortens life.

Thirdly, even if the present law were said to be endorsing the suffering of the dying, and it was replaced by a law permitting assisted suicide for the terminally ill, why would such a law not be endorsing the suffering of the chronically ill – who could not kill themselves, even with assistance, because of paralysis, or who were not competent?

Professor John Keown

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Georgetown University Washington DC, United States

SIR – John Landamore (Letters, December 30) hopes any new legislation will allow him to decide when he meets God. Perhaps he should consider whether God will be happy to meet him before his appointed time.

Kathy White

Woking, Surrey