Will concerns over assisted dying kill the Bill?
With so many questions about coercion and its effect on palliative care, will concerns over assisted dying kill the Bill?
Organisations representing disabled people have been raising the possibility that Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill may lead to them being coerced – bullied, in effect – into ending their lives.
One of them – Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) – posted a thread about it on X:
Coercion in the context of assisted dying is when someone is pressured or controlled into ending their life:
This is an extremely important issue that MP’s must consider carefully before they vote on 29th November
Please share this
Thread 🧵 #AssistUsToLive pic.twitter.com/yItpMmExaS
— DPAC (@Dis_PPL_Protest) November 23, 2024
Internalized pressure⁰Some people may feel pressure from within themselves, such as not wanting to be a burden.⁰
Think about what that means for Disabled People— DPAC (@Dis_PPL_Protest) November 23, 2024
Coercion means forcing someone to do something they don’t want to do.
Think about what that means for Disabled People
— DPAC (@Dis_PPL_Protest) November 23, 2024
Do you reckon MPs will think what any of that means for disabled people? Or are they more likely to get it all backwards and think about possibly saving money instead?
If so, then they’ll still be mistaken, according to some.
Writing movingly in The Guardian about the end-of-life care given in 2002 to his daughter, who died after just 11 days of life, former Chancellor and Prime Minister Gordon Brown [pictured] said the debate on assisted dying was moving too fast and said a commission on end-of-life care should be set up instead, to create a “fully-funded, 10-year strategy for improved and comprehensive palliative care” instead of seeking to change the law.
“When only a small fraction of the population are expected to choose assisted dying, would it not be better to focus all our energies on improving all-round hospice care to reach everyone in need of end of life support?” he said.
Brown added: “Medical advances that can transform end-of-life care and the horror of people dying alone, as with Covid, have taught us a great deal.
“This generation have it in our power to ensure no-one should have to face death alone, uncared for, or subject to avoidable pain.”
In that, it seems Mr Brown is in line with Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who has expressed concern about the impact on hospice care if assisted dying is legalised and has ordered his department to calculate the costs of the bill, warning that it could divert money from other NHS services.
Other Labour ministers including Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and the minister for Palliative Care, Stephen Kinnock, have indicated that they may support the Bill at the debate and vote on Friday (November 29).
This Writer’s opinion? I’m with Mr Brown, and even Streeting, on this one – albeit because of DPAC’s argument. The threat of disabled people being bullied into assisted suicide is real, and must be fought.
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assisted dying beggers belief they doing it now putting people’s to death utterly wrong but killing people’s his happening now it never stopped just charged names it was Liverpool pathways to death but in hospital they have six steps when you reach that six then it’s goodbye
assisted dying beggers belief they doing it now putting people’s to death utterly wrong but killing people’s his happening now it never stopped just charged names it was Liverpool pathways to death but in hospital they have six steps when you reach that six then it’s goodbye pleas