Assisted dying debate next week… To think this is a relief. So glad they’re finally debating this important issue.

[Mavenss]

We will be able to see which MPs are for or against assisted dying.

This Monday 29th April, assisted dying will be debated in Westminster for the first time in two years. An absolutely incredible 203,000 people added their name to the government petitionspearheaded by Dame Esther Rantzen to make this happen, creating the largest ever parliamentary petition on assisted dying.

There will not be a vote on Monday, but this debate will be the last time before the General Election that MPs have an opportunity to show you that they are listening to our calls for safe and compassionate choice at the end of life. A majority of voters in every constituency support an assisted dying law.

The debate starts at 4:30pmand you can watch it live online through the UK parliament website.

YABU- it’s a silly idea, why are government even debating it? Assisted dying is a terrible idea.

YANBU - I support the debate and assisted dying (under the agreed circumstances)

I’m interested in the MN feedback here.

I take it, therefore, that you'd be in favour of putting a cap at that sum on treatment for any person of any age? Including seriously ill children whose conditions require long and very expensive treatment?

See screen shots for the survey results on euthanasia for the mentally ill and children. Including asking is it important that the child’s parents consent’?
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2023-08/ipsos-assisted-dying-survey-july-2023-charts.pdf

I'm supportive of it.

But that's how it was framed originally in The Netherlands and Canada.

It's changed now...

And it would here.

Exactly.

Anyone saying differently isn't paying attention and is extremely naive.

@VickyEadieofThigh
Exactly. It would definitely be amended and expanded. It’s already being suggested in the opinion polls, which means that the activists want to add this on later.

‘It would definitely be amended and expanded’

Pure conjecture

This. it completely changed my mind :(

Folk like me? I don’t want wider parameters. You make a lot of assumptions.

Why would anyone want to prevent unnecessary early deaths by euthanasia of elderly or disabled young because they are requiring too many NHS resources?

No. Pure whats happening in Canada.

@Mavenss I accept that you say today that you don't want wider parameters. But you do want to change the boundaries though quite significantly, despite all the evidence that it's a bad idea and paves the road for more lobbying that does widen the parameters.

You take comfort from a belief you have fostered that 'safeguards' can be put in place to support the right to die for those who chose it as sovereign citizens. (And I don't think you realise the huge degree to which your thinking has been unconsciously shaped by libertarian ethics seeking to place the individual at the centre of every moral decision).

But the real world evidence is that 'safeguards' don't work, get chiselled and societies end up where you say you don't want or expect to be - with the right to die becoming a duty to die on the old, disabled and infirm. And with cracks forming where mentally ill thirty year olds can find licensed people willing to sign the paperwork on a medically assisted suicide.

It's just bad policy.

No-one, but no-one at all is talking about EUTHANASIA here. Not even thinking about it.

Please, assisted suicide with all the safety framework in place, is NOT at all the same.

Stop this confusion, deliberate or otherwise, and scare mongering.

VickyEadieofThigh · Today 12:00
titbumwillypoo · Today 08:59

Fine, £500,000
I take it, therefore, that you'd be in favour of putting a cap at that sum on treatment for any person of any age? Including seriously ill children whose conditions require long and very expensive treatment?

Why not, NICE make that decision everyday. If the government said that was the cap from 2026 for all children born from then, parents could plan based on that, take out insurance and could make responsible decisions and those children would grow up knowing they would have to take some personal responsibility for their lives.

This has NOT happened in Switzerland at all, despite being allowed for over 60 years. The parameters, checks, etc, have not been changed since. Full capacity has to be proven, and full checks to ensure to outside pressures- all his filmed, on at least two occasions, including on the day, just before the injection of drink- which has to be self triggered or swallowed. And video given to police immediately after. So where is the slippery slope?

@fungipie but we are talking about euthanasia aren't we? You don't accept this part of the debate as legitimate because it is too challenging to your conception of the good death, chosen by a sovereign citizen, respected in law and assisted by medical professionals. The fact that you won't see it in wider terms is the problem with your position. You dismiss the realities of undue influence, coercive control, and subjectivity within the medical professionals expected to deliver the apparatus for the good death.

It's utopian idealism that leads to support for assisted suicide, but we do not live in a utopia. We live in a messy difficult world and policy should not pretend otherwise.

And this is why, although I would personally prefer the option for assisted suicide, I couldn't vote for it

The idea that significantly disabled young adults should be killed if they aren't well enough to take some personal responsibility for their lives is abhorrent

And people who advocate for this are why bringing in assisted suicide is dangerous

Because some people really do think/act like disabled people aren't real people at all

It is literally voluntary euthanasia.

I'm not at all surprised; liberalism can be a wonderful thing, but the Netherlands has got it like a disease and it brings some deeply unpleasant outcomes

Assisted suicide is where you take medication of your own free will, euthanasia is where someone else gives you the medication. There's a significant difference, morally and legally.

NO. It is an assisted choice to die.

Euthanasia means that someone else makes the decision. NOT at all the same.

Totally unfair to say this without giving a link to the real framework. Surely this would be only under extreme circumstances, like switching a life support machine or cases of extreme handicap where the child cannot express themselves and have zero quality of life.

Please, post a proper link to the Law.

However, this is NOT at all, what is being proposed in the UK.

@fungipie it takes all over 60 seconds of googling to uncover that assisted suicide in Switzerland is highly controversial and just as prone to abuse as anywhere else.

Show us the links from your Googling then.

Talk about morals and psychology all you like (I’m a Psychologist), the fact remains we’re talking about real people, real lives and desperate situations.

It is not a hypothetical quandary for thousands of people. It is real. They can’t bear to be alive any longer - for whatever reason.

People making judgements about what another person can or can’t do, with regards to their own body (where that person has the cognitive capacity to decide for themselves), is unacceptable.