Today we’ve had the news that the UK’s prosecution service has issued guidelines on where people will be prosecuted in cases of assisted suicide. Basically people won’t be if they assist someone provided they stick to certain conditions. Fair enough. But there’s a bit of a problem here – we’re in danger of allowing some groups of people who wish their life to end to be allowed their wish and others not to.
Part of the problem is the use of the phrase euthanasia which is mistakenly believed to imply “putting down” those people who are in dire straits with or without their consent. In particular people are worried that euthanasia opens the door to killing those who are inconveniently lingering. Such killings have occurred throughout history and are probably occurring today.
Assisted suicide is not euthanasia – the key is the word suicide – it is an active decision by someone to end their life. Ordinary suicide is of course legal (at least now), but assisting someone’s suicide remains illegal. So anyone in extremis who needs help in ending their life needs to find someone who is prepared to undertake the risk of prosecution to help out.
There are two problems with this. Firstly it limits the availability of assisted suicide to those who do have a friend or lover prepared to take the risk. Not everyone has such a close relationship with someone else, so we are essentially saying that such people have no way out of an intolerable situation – is that fair ?
Secondly, as assisted suicide remains illegal, it is something that is carried out stealthily in private with no oversight. It is easy to see that there are any number of possible abuses here – murder could in some circumstances be disguised as assisted suicide. And we certainly do not want to make murder any easier to get away with.
What we need is to legalise assisted suicide and require some form of procedure to make it more open and subject to oversight. In particular we need to ensure that other avenues are explored – we need to ensure that people do not opt for assisted suicide when other options are available.
Today’s announcement was essentially the easy way out – it doesn’t give those in favour of assisted suicide what they want and neither are those opposed happy about it. Whilst legalising assisted suicide will also not make those opposed happy, they need to understand that keeping it illegal won’t stop it.