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.

For example, one the one hand we have a risk, a possibility, the seriousness or likelihood of which is yet to be determined. Whereas on the other we have a certainty, because the right to die could necessarily only be deployed by an individual once the criteria 'wanting to die but being unable to do so' was in play.

This is untrue. You have one idea of what AD should mean, as this thread shows other people have much wider reaching ideas of what it should be. You can not guarantee that your version would be the version implemented.

It is not a certainty that any one person will have an unpleasant death.

And we are not in a position to know how many people do die in suffering because all the avenues to prevent the suffering have not been explored.

Re finances - you call it an 'enormous project', but why? Why would it be any bigger than, for eg, the project of allowing acupuncture on the NHS?

Clear it would be nothing like implementing acupuncture.

It is far more complicated, requires more staff, greater training, more infrastructure, more monitoring, more expensive equipment, the drafting and ratifying of legislation- and the potential for harm is enormous when compared with acupuncture.

Do you have evidence for the latter? Your former points are circular/rely on a belief in the absolute sanctity of life.

Not at all- as I’ve said life isn’t sacred except to the person living it.

The evidence is obvious- go and look at places it has been implemented and what has happened. The information is freely available to anyone who cares to look.

I was referring to the psychological torture of wishing to die, likely in unbearable pain, but being unable to do so - not the psychological torture of fearing death. As I think you know

Your post was unclear.

All the posts saying AD is as bad as suicide for the bystanders - absolute rubbish!

A person from our village, in their late 60’s with a degenerative condition that was going to make their life very poor quality in the coming years went to a clinic in Europe to end their life. Their family knew it was their wishes and would happen eventually, friends knew it was what they had planned, hell, I knew and I was only an aquaintance.
Compared to a secretly planned suicide that leaves family and friends reeling for years, unable to understand and wondering if they could have helped. Not forgetting the poor sod that finds them after the event…comparing apples and chalk!

AD and abortion both result in the end of life for someone so there is at least one parallel. AD doesn't happen in a vacuum, but neither does suicide or abortion or anything else in life that you do. Every action we take in life has a consequence, good or bad, it is just a matter of balancing one against the other.

In order to have a legal abortion you need to satisfy certain criteria and be signed off by at least two medical professionals. Maybe there should be and could be several parallels between AD and abortions.

The third parties to whom I was alluding were the innocent bystanders who witness a suicide falling from a great height and see their bodies explode all over the pavement.

Except you're just picking an example out of many, and it's not clear if you would actually have known how others actually felt about it. You're making an assumption based on what you felt about it and assuming everyone else agreed. Even if you're right about your example, it doesn't cancel the trauma of the young woman whose father was allowed access to MAID in the grip of major depressive episode does it.

The young woman was upset, well boo hoo. If she loved her father and cared about his wishes she should have be pleased for him. Obviously she was upset that her father was dead, but its not about her. The only person who matters is the one it is happening to. As he was in the grip of major depressive episodes it is likely he would have sought to end his own life in one way or another, at least this way it was in a safe and controlled environment.

Drug addicts will continue to take drugs, but where safe places are provided with clean needles etc at least they are doing it in a controlled way and have minimal impact on others, eg. the danger they pose whilst high and the chance of children finding dirty needles.

Providing secure places for people to do what they are going to do anyway is surely better than the effect reckless actions have on innocent bystanders, be that AD vs suicide, drugs consumption rooms vs crack dens or abortion clinics vs backstreet butchers. Surely anything that improves things for the end user is a step in the right direction.

The young woman was upset, well boo hoo. If she loved her father and cared about his wishes she should have be pleased for him.

She should be pleased that her father, while going through a major depression, was fast-tracked into state-sponsored suicide?

I mean, by all means keep making these comments. You're doing a great job for those of us opposing assisted dying.

Whatsortoffrockare you '2)Being scared of dying isn’t ’psychological torture’ unless you have some kind of mental illness, in which case you apparently won’t be able to access AD anyway.'

Sorry, but you have no idea. If you suffer form Motor Neurone disease or other types of auto-immune diseases- and you know death will come by slow asphixation- you'd be terrified too.

You are being so disingenuous here. I am sure his daughter would have been much less upset if he had jumped in front of a train, jumped from a high rise building, died in the garage with engine on, in the bath with wrists cut, or hung from the landing. Are you sure here?

But yes, you are right, any new legislation if passed in the UK would not include depression sufferers.

Sorry if my post is shocking and too descriptive, but this is the reality here. If no safe options are available, this is what so often happens. And yes, it is devastatingly upsetting for all involved.

I am absolutely not being disingenuous. I'm pointing out what a revolting suggestion it is that the woman in Canada should have been pleased her depressed father was helped to commit suicide. You are being disingenuous by presenting a false dilemma between AD and other methods. Most of us would prefer NEITHER option is utilised by someone who is vulnerable and mentally unwell, and would take the view that a medical professional actually facilitating that is a) making that outcome vastly more likely and b) in gross dereliction of their duty.

I agree, a person suffering a major depressive episode doesn’t have the mental capacity to consent to death in any form. Posting that a woman in Canada should be pleased that doctors essentially saw her suicidal Dad on a bridge and then gave him a nice firm shove off the bridge to fall to his death is revolting.

There was zero empathy in that pro-eugenics post for sufferers of MDD.

The right comparator to assisted dying is being shoved in front of a train, pushed off a high rise, locked into a garage with poison gas, stabbed while in the bath, or strangled with a garrotte.

Assisted dying requires a second person present to help them die. Your list required no assistance to enact.

If made legal, assisted dying will be a legal form of homicide instead of its current status of illegal homicide (murder & manslaughter).

Couldn't agree more. @VeryHappyBunny some of the things you have said on this thread are absolutely repellent.

It didn't include depression sufferers in Canada AT FIRST...

Only took 5 years for it to be expanded.

A foetus isn’t a ‘someone’, it’s a foetus. It doesn’t exist independently from its host and as such doesn’t have human rights.

@Whatsortofrockareyou your life has as much value to me as my own. I am absolutely horrified at how assisted dying has devolved in other countries and will fight this from becoming legal here for as long as I live. I am really appalled that you are having to face such rampant ableism.

Thank you, it’s good to know some people see things for what they are.

If you are clear on not wanting to ever access AD why can you not give others the credit for being able to decide for themselves in a similar situation they don't want it too? Are you the only one enlightened enough to make an informed choice?

It isn’t about me, or any individual person. There is inherent risk to vulnerable groups when AD is implemented, as has been explained multiple times and as is clearly demonstrated in countries where it is used.

@Whatsortofrockareyou well labelling people "vulnerable" is certainly a good way to control them and prevent them from making a choice you don't like. I'm sure that Canadian woman would've had her dad thrown in a psych ward if she could until he came around to her way of thinking.

A lot on here are just afraid their own family members will take this up and they can't handle them making that decision or having any sort of control over their own lives.

@ so hypothetically you would support your own daughter in her twenties if she desired to die by suicide rather than receive mental health care during a depressive episode? You'd affirm that "choice" as an exercise of free will and drive her to the clinic and sit with her while a nurse fitted the IV line and the drugs flowed in? I suspect not.

‘Vulnerable’ isn’t a label, it’s a description of circumstance.

Do you think that elderly people in care homes aren’t particularly vulnerable to abuse?
How about disabled children in residential schools? If they aren’t vulnerable to mistreatment why do we have whole social services departments dedicated to their protection?

Chronically ill people who are reliant on state benefits, social and medical care for their survival? Are they not placed in a vulnerable position such that any change of government policy stands to have a significant impact on their lives?

"vulnerable" is certainly a good way to control them and prevent them from making a choice you don't like

Why would your vulnerability being recognised mean you are unable to think for yourself?

Very few elderly, disabled or ill people lack capacity- it’s incredibly ablist to presume that if you are part of a group which has vulnerabilities not shared by the wider community that you lack the capacity for decision making.

As for “a choice I don’t like”- I have no feelings at all about what random people decide they want to do with their life and their bodies. If Jo blogs down the street takes himself to Dignitas it doesn’t affect me, even if we are both wheelchair users.

What I “don’t like” is the proposition that it’s obvious that Joe Blogs and I would want AD because ‘it’s not a life’ or ‘no one would want to live like that’.

And even more I “don’t like” the argument that some individuals desire to control their own end to the Nth degree means that it’s totally reasonable to legalise killing people who by definition ARE more vulnerable to a scheme like this because they fall into the category of ‘people it’s reasonable to kill’ whether they like it or not.

.

Sorry, but no- no comparison whatsover.

But the alternatives do involve other people- spouses, children, friends, who find the diseased hanging form the rafters or lying in bed surrounded by sick, etc. Train drivers, who have nightmares and often ptsd and can never go back to work, ambulance drivers, walkers by, total strangers, and so many more.