Assisted dying bill - if the bill passes do those of strong religious conviction have a duty to oppose it?

[mids2019]

Assisted d dying may become a reality in the UK but if you have a strong two-hour conviction would you lobby for repeal of in some other way oppose it?

For instance in the NHS already many doctors are wanting to distance themselves from such a procedure as it isn't compatible with religious beliefs.

Is the UK ready for such a change of will it become a divisive element in British society?

The proposed bill for England and Wales has been touted to be modelled after Oregon’s law along with claims that no slippery slope has happened on Oregon.

However, this is not an uncontested claim. Some have found that Oregon has also felt the slippery slope by de facto measures even though the law itself has not been amended.
Assisted Suicide and Slippery Slopes: Reflections on Oregon
18 April 2024
“Oregon is often cited at parliamentary committees as a challenge to the cogency of the slippery slope argument against legalization of assisted suicide. While acknowledging the main reasons for the citation’s plausibility, the present paper argues that there are features of Oregon’s evolving practice that evidences an empirical slippery slope – albeit one with a hitherto relatively low gradient. Empirical evidence of a morally interesting trajectory is ascertainable from increases in each of the annual case numbers, the percentage of assisted suicide patients citing burden-based concerns, the margin of error in misprognoses of terminal illnesses, and the reporting of qualifying illnesses that are not normally (or at least predictably) terminal in character. Part-explaining these increases may be two aspects of normative slippage worthy of increased attention. One is slippage from a sort of voluntariness contemplated by the initial public justification for assisted suicide, one which intentionally did not include burden-based concerns in its account, to a now widespread assisted suicide voluntariness that is motivated by burden-based concerns. Potentially, the slippage may even be to a newly evolved public justification: to one that affirms burden-based voluntariness in assisted suicide provision. The other aspect of moral-logical slippage raised by Oregon’s practice is expansion of the terminal illness ground to accommodate chronic illnesses effectively rendered terminal due to a legally protected right to refuse treatment. There are reasons to think that this de facto expansion has occurred in Oregon. Even if evidence to the contrary is uncovered, this particular issue is an important and under-appreciated juncture in the moral-logical slippery slope argument. As such it warrants scrutiny. Is there a non-arbitrary rationale for restricting assisted suicide access to ‘direct’ terminal illness cases and excluding cases where a refusal of treatment effectively transforms a chronic illness into an illness where death is a near-term inevitability? I argue that such exclusion is not rationally justified under an autonomy-based account of assisted suicide’s permissibility and proves difficult to consistently (non-arbitrarily) maintain even under a beneficence-based account of same.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20502877.2024.2338317#d1e138

Why on earth would you say that’s where I want it to go? 🤨

I have been pay attention and I was actually already aware of that case. Canada is not the best example, not just for that case but regarding people with depression, etc being able to access it i believe. I do think there needs to be better safeguarding which other countries apart from Canada seem to manage.

“Meanwhile, the standard PAS protocol in the USA involves the prescription of a lethal dose of a barbiturate, typically pentobarbital or secobarbital, to be consumed by the patient in liquid form. Often, the dose is mixed with juice, in what is often called a ‘potion’, to combat the bitter taste of the drugs. The patient is legally required to drink the potion by themselves, to ensure the decision remains autonomous. Physicians are free to prescribe, off-label, any drug they deem fit for these lethal purposes, under protection from prosecution. Only three lethal medications (secobarbital, pentobarbital, and phenobarbital) have been used, according to state statistics, aside from anti-nausea and anti-anxiety medications to combat side effects.5 In the Netherlands and Belgium, physicians typically rely on sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide when euthanizing patients at their behest.13”

“The pervasive belief that these, or any, noxious drugs are guaranteed to provide for a peaceful and painless death must be dispelled; modern medicine cannot yet achieve this. Certainly some, if not most, executions and suicides have been complication-free, but this notion has allowed much of the general public to write them off as humane, and turn a blind eye to any potential problems.”
https://academic.oup.com/jlb/article/4/2/424/4265564?login=false

“Oregon also destroys the case that assisted suicide is somehow the less painful and more dignified end to suffering. The Oregon reports reveal that between 2001 and 2023, 103 assisted-suicide patients (seven per cent) took over six hours to die. The longest time to death was 137 hours (5.7 days). Nine patients even regained consciousness after taking the drugs. All too often, the process of assisted suicide is neither compassionate nor kind. Just look at the case of David Prueitt, who woke up 65 hours after taking what was meant to be a lethal dose of medication.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/15/oregon-is-no-model-for-assisted-dying/#google_vignette

Definitely. I’ve seen both my parents die long, lingering deaths due to cancer. I don’t think either of them could have had better palliative care. My dad died at home on a morphine pump, district nurse every day, hospice workers three times a day as well as all night through the night. My mum died in a hospice and was taken care of as much as modern medicine allows.

but there is a point where they’re screaming in pain when the nurses say “sorry, i can’t give anymore morphine “. Because giving more would cause them to go into respiratory depression……🤷‍♀️. Which they’re currently not allowed to do! So they have to be distressed and in pain until the clock decrees the next dose can be given.

if you gave the dose early then I guess that would be assisted dying. So you can either give adequate pain relief and potentially the person dies earlier. Or they are left in pain and limp on a few more weeks before dying.

Other countries managing badly is better than Canada’s terrifying mis-management, but that hardly inspires confidence.

People of strong religious conviction should not be pressured to participate in assisted dying. They should not have to choose it for themselves. They should not have to take jobs at facilities that perform assisted dying procedures.

there are some moral absolutes in this world, one of them is that you don’t impose religious beliefs upon other people.

I’m willing to agree that murder is wrong. I think that is a moral absolute. It transcends culture and religion. I won’t agree that I don’t have the right to end my own life. I shouldn’t have to resort to difficult and possibly ineffective means to do so. I also shouldn’t have to end my life earlier than necessary just because I am scared that I will lose the ability to physically complete the act totally independently.

I have a condition that will very likely make the end of my life extremely difficult and painful. I have no intention of being tortured at the end and that is what it may be, torture. I had a brief glimpse when I first got sick before doctors got things under control. That is not how I am going to die whether the local laws support me or not.

imposing an arbitrary belief that continuing life is more important than ending suffering is a religious belief. It is something you can choose for yourself. You do not have the right to choose it for others.

Who says the other countries are managing badly?

But also, from another angle, if this god is so powerful, why did „”he” create such immense suffering, such pain, for some people to suffer, at the end of their lives, but then expect these very people to die in such suffering, because “he” has decreed that it’s an utter sin, to end their lives, no matter how immense the suffering?

All I want to see is that we can individually say when it would be appropriate for ourselves, signed by a lawyer and a doctor. Then when the time comes, also signed by a lawyer and a doctor. We are all different and will have different ideas of when life is no longer worth it.

I never ever want to be a burden to my children.

Does the professional duty of a clinician as it stands prevent participation in the assisted dying process?

A doctor's first instinct surely is to preserve life not end it and to add this duty to the medical body as whole may be really problematic if not thought through.

Also we have to recognise 10% of clinicians are Muslim as well as other faiths including Christianity so people may be surprised at the attitude of doctors as a whole.

Personally I think we ultimately are not ready as a country and only if we were a world outlier in this issue would there be a critical mass to make this law

Wes Streeting is already muddying the waters by forcing the NHS to approximate the financial repercussions of this. If the analysis shows a massive cost saving for the NHS in not providing expensive treatment for the months leading up to the end of life this will look like an NHS efficiency drive of a macabre kind and MPs may turn their nose up at it.

We also need to recognise suicide in general is viewed as a tragedy and should we be looking at a world where we state sanction it even for the most understandable of reasons?

You could argue all suicide is a product if mental health problems or the perception of unbearable pain and as a society we rightly actively try and prevent it. Surely you can say that good palliative care is a better option than active choice to end your own life.

Also with any form of suicide can it be argued your life or ending of it does impact others? What if a daughter were to say that her mother's intention to die by assisted dying would cause her immense trauma? Would that opinion matter? Would the impact on relatives be weighed up in the decision to allow the death?

But looking after a terminally ill person for 6 months costs money.
I'm not saying that there should be a break even point where you are told that your palliative care is now going to cost more than assisted dying, but palliative care costs money too.

@mids2019

have you ever been so sick or injured that you weren’t sure if you would survive? Experienced 24/7 unrelenting pain that kept you from sleeping or even concentrating on anything but your pain? It’s an experience no one would want to repeat. If you have been lucky enough to avoid that, have you watched a love one be in unimaginable pain during the last few weeks of life?

palliative care can be cruelty. As a society we often provide better deaths to our pets than we do to our loved ones.

calling it a tragedy is honestly offensive.

Why are you assuming that people "of a strong religious conviction" would oppose it ?

People of faith are as individual as people without a faith.
Lots of people who have a faith support Dying with Dignity.
Lots of people feel the proposed bill doesn't go far enough, but presumably it has had to be watered down to stand a chance of getting through as too many people seem to think they should be able to make choices or decisions which somehow overrule the the people that those decisions actually affect.

My own MP has declared this - that he will be voting against the bill, even though he would want that choice for himself

Every single religion forbids any kind of assisted dying, based on the belief that one should never end a life that god has created. If that’s your religion’s stance on the matter, , then it would be assumed that as a follower and adherent of that religion, you would be of the same view. But I guess, as with any religious faith, a lot of pick and mixing goes on.

I support Assisted Dying in the case of a definitive terminal illness and where the person can give consent. I'm not a fan of Canada's expansion on their AD laws.

I think whether you have a faith or not, and whether you support the bill or not, it doesn't matter. I'm a staunch atheist and personally believe if there was a kindly God who had compassion he wouldn't allow long, drawn-out painful deaths in the first place. He'd not have the illnesses that cause these types of deaths either. But it's not to be. The Christian idea of suffering for merit disgusts me.

We should be allowed to have the choice to either wait until nature takes its course, or to permit a doctor to end a life. My family tends to die of cancer. There have been some awful, drawn out deaths, with some asking to kill themselves. I want the option to choose, should I get a diagnosis.

Of course this shouldn't be a case of bumping people off to save money for palliative and social care. I think they should be much improved. I hope the State doesn't go down that road.

When someone does in huge pain and I am incredibly sorry for their loss then I do think we have to ask sensitive questions about what is being offered in terms of palliative care even if it is a great deal of opioids. Reduction pain at the end of life should be a serious area of study.

I think as a society we do think of suicide very cautiously. If a teenager commits suicide due to an unbearable psychological pain then without trying to cause offence that is a tragedy in my opinion so we need to look at this sensitively and in the round.

In reality with uncertainty around end of life timescales there may be very few people that will take this route due to the logistics of gaining consent from two amenable doctors, the time taken for a judicial review to ensure non coercion etc.

I think it will be a slippery slope.

we have to ask sensitive questions about what is being offered in terms of palliative care even if it is a great deal of opioids. Reduction pain at the end of life should be a serious area of study.

But they already administer the max amount of opioids they can give without tipping over into assisted dying. So any more opioids would be what you're against. You seem to think there is some magic solution which they're just not bothering with at the minute. After nursing both my parents through prolonged cancer deaths I can promise there isn't.

Have you ever nursed someone through a prolonged and painful death where the doctors say there's no more pain relief they can give because "it might kill them"?

So we either remain at the status quo, or we give a bit more pain relief which some people would term assisted dying.

I don't have any religious beliefs, but if I did, I'd think it important at very least to see those represented and protected for individual practitioners (not imposed on others or on those considering assisted dying for themselves, of course).

My concerns about assisted dying are based on the UK's record of state and social attitudes towards disabled people. A country that's been under investigation and criticised by the UN human rights commission for its treatment of disabled and ill people and where there are suicides due to ill-treatment and societal attitudes, scapegoating, abuse and vilification in the media is definitely not a safe or trustworthy country to administer assisted dying.

I 100% think we should be putting more in to palliative care. But I also think there are two issues with that.

Firstly, I would have liked all these “caring” people to have cared a bit more about it earlier.

Second, the nature of the discussion tries to hide the grim reality of dying. It is often horrendous, whether measured in pain or erasure of dignity. There is no magic wand that will stop this without also shortening the person’s life. We shouldn’t pretend there is.

Suicide so often is a tragedy. But occasionally, it is not. It is the last chance for a person in horrendous circumstances to take control of their own life by ending it.

The Netherlands is touted as a model country. Have a read of this:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/18/death-on-demand-has-euthanasia-gone-too-far-netherlands-assisted-dying

I'm so fed up and would be happy with assistance plus knowing I'm signing it all off

@CouchSweetPotatoes a friend of mine took her own life after years and years of mental health problems. It was absolutely tragic as she was young, lovely and so talented. But I don't think she'd have ever recovered and it was a way out of her extreme distress.

The potential law being voted on are so strict (rightly or wrongly) that I don't think many people will be queuing up for it to happen. Courts are still back logged and if you have less than 6 months to live you might not not even get a court date for a judge to sign it off in that time!

Personally for me I think they are too strict, we don't treat animals like this because it is cruel and inhumane but yet people are happy for humans to be treated like it.

Religion has no place at all in any law making procedure. Most religious people would I assume accept medical assistance to help them live longer but what if it is God's way of saying you got hit by that bus because it's your time to go? Wouldn't accepting medical help in that situation be going against God's will? People should be allowed to die how and when they choose when diagnosed with a terminal or poor prognosis diagnosis.