My father’s merciful death taught me a heart-rending truth: compassion matters more than the law

ON MY father’s death certificate, it says he died of ‘carcinoma lymphoma with multiple metastases’. In layman’s language, that’s cancer of the lymphatic system, with secondary tumours on his lungs, liver and elsewhere.

Now, I’m no expert, but I reckon that this entry in the official records is not strictly true. If my guess is right, the immediate cause of my beloved father’s death was a large dose of a painkiller — some form of morphine, if I remember rightly — administered by his doctor as I sat by his hospital bedside shortly before he breathed his last.

I have not the slightest doubt that if he had been left untreated he would have died anyway, within a few hours at most. As it was, I’m pretty sure his heart stopped beating at the precise moment it did because of the drug, not the cancer.

I cannot stress strongly enough that I make no complaint about this. Though it is fair to assume his doctor was aware that the dosage she gave him was likely to shorten his life, her intention was clearly not to kill him but to ease his acute discomfort in the ( mercifully short) terminal stage of his illness.

Indeed, I am grown-up enough to realise that countless people in the UK, probably several every week, die of painkillers administered by doctors. This has been true since the earliest days of the medical profession, and I believe no one with an ounce of compassion for a human being in extremis would have it any other way.

Suffering

Yet under a literal interpretation of the law, any medic knowingly bringing about a patient’s death could face a murder charge. Similarly, a loving relative who helps grant a suffering patient’s wish to die could face prosecution under the 1961 Suicide Act, which makes it an offence punishable by 14 years’ jail to aid, abet, counsel or procure the suicide of another.

It is easy to understand, therefore, why campaigners — almost all with heartrending personal stories of suffering cruelly drawn out — have long fought for a change in the law to permit assisting a suicide.

God knows we should feel for such people. Some are in daily pain and yearning for the end, while lacking the physical capacity to bring it about themselves. Others have to endure the misery of seeing their nearest and dearest suffer, feeling powerless under present legislation to help them on their way.

No wonder they believe the law is monstrously cruel to deny the incapacitated a right the rest of us have enjoyed (if that’s the word) since the 1961 Act decriminalised suicide itself.

Some of these campaigners want only a clarification of the law, spelling out exactly how far a doctor or relative may go in aiding a suicide. Is it illegal, for example, to make a telephone call booking a loved one into the Dignitas death-clinic in Switzerland, where assisted suicide is lawful, or to help the patient on to the plane?

Others want a straight change in the legislation, permitting assisted suicide in the UK, albeit under strictly defined circumstances.

All I can say for sure is that neither group will be satisfied by a former Supreme Court judge’s assertion this week that he thought the present law should remain in force. Nor do I suppose they were much mollified when he added: ‘I think the law should be broken from time to time.’

Lord Sumption made his remarks on Tuesday after delivering the first of his Reith lectures — on the theme that judges are increasingly asked to fill a vacuum left by politicians — which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on May 21.

‘It has always been the case that [assisted suicide] has been criminal,’ he said. ‘But it’s also been the case that courageous friends and families have helped people to die. It is an untidy compromise few lawyers would adopt but I don’t think there is a moral obligation to obey the law… ultimately it is for each person’s conscience.’

On the face of it, of course, it’s extremely odd for an eminent former judge, of all people, to say that we needn’t necessarily obey the law if our consciences tell us to break it. In a mature democracy such as ours, it’s surely a dangerous doctrine, too, which few of us would like to see extended to many other areas of the law.

Conscience

Take the ineffably smug Extinction Rebellion members, currently causing massive inconvenience and damage to livelihoods in the capital (I write with some feeling) with their futile protest against climate change. As they never tire of telling us, they don’t want to break the law in this way, but their wonderful, marvellous consciences tell them they must.

Whether or not we share their views about man-made global warming — and I know a great many do — most fellow Londoners I’ve spoken to long for the police and gutless Mayor Sadiq Khan to enforce the law and let the rest of us get on with our lives unmolested.

But on the agonisingly thorny question of assisted suicide, I reckon that Lord Sumption has got it plumb right on both counts. First, he is right when he says we need the law banning us from helping a fellow human being die, no matter how fervently a loved one or patient yearns for death. If we repealed it, driven by compassion for the difficult cases, the unintended consequences could be truly chilling. As the former judge says, this could leave many elderly and sick people under pressure, feeling they are a burden on relatives and thinking they have a duty to end it all.

Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that if assisted suicide were to be made lawful, no matter how carefully drafted the legislation, it wouldn’t be long before it became routine. The law is needed as a safety net.

Look what happened when Parliament legalised abortion in 1967, on the strict understanding that a pregnancy could be terminated only if continuing it would mean risking the life or mental health of the mother or existing children, or if there was ‘substantial’ risk that a child would be born ‘seriously handicapped’.

Today, abortion is widely seen as a casual alternative to contraception, with more than 500 terminations carried out every day in England and Wales alone.

Comfort

But don’t take my word for it that the same would apply to legalising assisted suicide.

Consider the Netherlands, where MPs voted in 2000 to decriminalise euthanasia, assuring the public: ‘This is only for people who are in great pain and have no prospect of recovery.’ Within three years, more than one per cent of all deaths in Holland were deliberately caused by doctors.

Yet Lord Sumption must surely be right, too, when he suggests there are some circumstances — those hardest of hard cases — in which it is morally defensible to break the law against helping a terminally sick patient, in acute pain, to take his or her life.

Indeed, this is how the law works in practice today (though not in theory), with the authorities turning a blind eye to doctors who administer lethal doses of morphine or relatives who book their loved ones into the grim- sounding Dignitas, when it is clear that they are driven by compassion alone.

Yes, it’s a messy compromise, but in my book it’s common sense — a great deal more satisfactory than any alterative.

But these are gloomy thoughts for Good Friday. So let me end by looking forward to Sunday, and the Easter message that Christ died for our sins on the cross, only to rise again on the Third Day. In so doing, He robbed death of its sting and gave every one of us the chance of eternal bliss after the grave.

For true believers like my late parents, this was the ultimate comfort. I can only say that those who share their complete faith in a blessed hereafter are the luckiest people alive.

But whatever your own beliefs may be, I wish a very happy Easter to you all.