Should assisted dying be legalised in the UK?

Richy Thompson, Campaigns manager for the British Humanist Association

Mark Atkinson, Interim chief executive at disability charity Scope

YES, The British Humanist Association (BHA) is a national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity.

BHA has long supported attempts to legalise assisted dying, assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia across the UK, for those who have made a clear decision, free from coercion, to end their lives and who are physically unable to do so themselves.

The charity has suggested that the choice of an assisted death should be an integral part of an individual’s human right and should not be instead of palliative care for terminally ill people, but a core part of comprehensive, patient-centred approaches to end of life care.

BHA has stated that compassionate doctors, who follow the wishes of their terminally ill or incurably suffering patients by assisting them to die, risk being charged with assisting suicide or murder.

Richy Thompson, campaign manager for BHA, said: “Where individuals are of sound mind but terminally ill or incurably suffering, offering them the option to have assistance to end their lives is the only compassionate choice, provided that it is their settled and uncoerced wish.

“It is past time that parliament or the courts recognise and rectify the fact that those who are terminally ill or suffering are not afforded the right to choose the manner and timing of their own death.”

NO, Scope, a national disability charity, is opposed to a change in the law on assisted dying. The charity has suggested that the safeguards in the Assisted Dying Bill are inadequate and the definition of who could be included is too broad.

The Bill refers to people who could be ‘reasonably expected to die’ within six months, yet Scope argue that this definition is too vague as it would include many disabled people who have lived fulfilling lives for many years.

Scope raises concerns that the Bill fails to acknowledge the negative assumptions that people make about their own quality of life when they are diagnosed with a terminal illness or disability.

Mark Atkinson, chief executive at disability charity Scope, said: “The debate on assisted dying is not going away, many fearing that it could lead to disabled people being pressured into ending their lives prematurely.

“Arguments in favour of assisted dying are rooted in the belief that the lives of sick and disabled people are not worth as much as other people’s. Why is it that when people who are not disabled want to commit suicide we try to talk them out of it, but when a disabled person wants to commit suicide, we focus on how to make that possible?

“Rather than talking about how to make suicide possible for vulnerable people, perhaps we should spend more time thinking about how their lives have meaning.”