Assisted Dying - A Life or Death Debate
By Jack Woolf
The Assisted Dying Bill has passed its first real test in the House of Commons, in a vote of 330 to 275. The commons, just like the wider public, was deeply divided about the issue, and the debate will continue to heat up as the bill returns to commons multiple times over the next few months.
But what do ordinary people think of the bill?
Freya is a student nurse who has had several placements across hospitals in the West Midlands. She has seen first hand the effects of terminal illnesses on patients and their families. ‘I had three deaths on my first placement, all from a terminal condition. They knew they were going to die and they just didn’t know when,’ she said. ‘They had to go through all of the pain, saying bye to their family and friends. It’s not nice for the staff either, having to watch that, because you do become really close with them,’ she continued.
Kerry Kent is 56 and a media public policy specialist. She is broadly supportive of the bill.
Kerry Kent
“I had a couple of relatives who I loved dearly die of cancer, and at the end of the process I wanted them to not feel like they had no option but to feel the pain they were feeling,” she said.
This is a common view amongst the British public. A recent Yougov study shows that a massive 73% of the British public agrees with assisted dying in principle, compared to 13% who do not.
Ultimately, Kerry argued that it was the role of a compassionate nation to ensure that programs like Assisted Dying were available. “People who want it should be able to access something that is enlightened and modern and considerate of people who don’t have medical options left,” she said.
Sarah Farley is a Christian whose faith partly affects her perspective on the bill. “Assisted dying makes us revaluate our values as a society, in its most brutal sense, it’s effectively state sanctioned suicide,” she said.
“Life is a gift from God,” she said. Though she emphasised that she understood those who want the bill passed, and can’t say what she’d want in that position herself. “I’m conflicted, but you’ve got to have compassion,” she said.
The Evangelical Alliance, a group campaigning against the bill, argue on their website that, “we believe legalising assisted dying in the UK will lead to unintended consequences, particularly for those living in socially deprived communities, with learning and physical disabilities, the elderly or those suffering with mental distress.”
They fully endorse the ‘slippery slope argument’, saying, “People will go from receiving a duty of care to feeling a duty to die if they are concerned about being a burden to loved ones.”
Llowes Morrison, who lives in Kent, recently had to go through the death of her uncle from a terminal illness. ‘Watching him deteriorate, he was begging to die, it was awful. He weighed nothing when he died,’ she said. This, along with the similar death of her father in 1999, led her to fully support the bill. 'I want my life ended with my loved ones around me. Who wants to go on their own? Not many people,’ she said. “I think it is vitally important it’s passed.”
Llowes’ Uncle posting on Facebook shortly before he died