'Assisted dying' sounds rather chummy

ASSISTED DYING is a very dangerous folly that, if it comes about, will change our attitude to human life, especially the elderly, and create a monstrous and frightening state where those who are vulnerable, will come to distrust their doctors and family members, who's motives  will leave them feeling they have 'a sword of Damocles' (to quote Archbishop Welby) hanging over them; and exposing them to a kind Kafkaesque helplessness. It will surely become a nightmarish and paranoid world in which to face your final days, weeks, months, or years, of your existence. The mental strain of such a situation will only add to what will already be, because of their terminal illness, a terror of dying, and naturally wishing to cling to life for as long as they can, regardless of the pain they suffer.

            

            Lord Falconer's Bill to be debated in the Lords this week, will, in itself not bring the above about. Indeed Lord Falconer's Bill could be supported by myself, if what I heard over the weekend is true; that it seeks to limit assisted dying to those who are expected to live only six months; and then the patient should (presumably if he or she is able) be given the means by which they can commit suicide.

            

            My complaint is not about someone taking their own life; but someone from the medical profession doing it on their behalf. Well then, why not a relative? This is where my opening paragraph warns of such a consequence of involving any family member in the death of an elderly relative.

            

            Why I oppose Lord Falconer's Bill, is that it represents only a beginning and not an end to what the law will allow when it comes to assisted dying. The phrase 'thin end of the wedge' is apposite. It is to me an odds on certainty that there will be a another such Bill before much longer, demanding that the practice of assisted dying creates newer and far more wider boundaries. Boundaries which Lord Falconer would oppose today; but, because through him this tadpole of a bill will have made euthanasia acceptable, and find ready support for enlarging the boundaries ever further, I find it a dangerous road to travel down.

WE HAVE, after all, travelled down such a road before. We have had people warning of similar consequences, only to be ignored. In 1967 a Private Members Bill was introduced to parliament by David Steel. Known as the Abortion Act 1967, it was meant (like Lord Falconer's) to address an injustice. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; and politicians intensions are indeed good. With the 1967 Act was meant to do was  to stop illegal abortions taking place which were a curse to women who wished to end their pregnancies in fear of society's moral retribution. Such abortions were often dangerous and in practice rested on nothing more than an abortionist's superstition.

            

             Society's moral retribution is however no longer a factor. Steel's Bill, like Falconer's today; set out boundaries. Section 1 of Steel's abortion act announced that; "Subject to the provisions of this section, a person shall not be guilty of an offence under the law relating to abortion when a pregnancy is terminated by a registered medical practitioner if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion, formed in good faith " It was well intended but, the phrase "formed in good faith" fell into abeyance over the following decades. We were told at the time that no women would, without genuine reason willingly give her child up to abortion.

            

             But where are we today? What does "if two medical practitioners" mean. Today it means nothing more than rubber stamping. For how else are we to explain the 250,000 abortions that taken place every year for the last ten years.

            

             Were these abortions taken reluctantly and guiltily because of our society's Victorian moral code, and the fear being ostracised? Never; abortion has been reduced to nothing more than another form of contraception by the 1967 Act. Foetuses are regarded as nothing more than tissue, like the skin on our bodies.

 EUTHANASIA, TO USE THE CORRECT TERM; which Falconer does not use in the title of his Bill, will over time, travel the same road as David Steels 1967 Abortion Act. The good intentions will create moral dilemmas that neither Steele or Falconer ever foresaw: because neither has a real understanding of human nature.

           

             Who knows, in the coming decades someone will introduce a Bill lowering the age of consent from sixteen to fourteen: then from fourteen to twelve. Ages which today we rightly see as falling within the compass of paedophilia, will be regarded as normal and written into law.

            

              The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.