Assisted dying and coercion

[ArabellaScott]

This is live right now, so I'm not sure how well linking to it will work. Copy-pasting below, aswell.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cy5k0qyled2t

'Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor, opts to answer a question about coercion and whether some MPs are right to feel concerned about this when considering the bill. (Earlier, MPs heard how medical and clinic staff are trained in safeguarding, though a retired GP acknowledged coercion was hard to spot.)
Clarke says she'd "strongly push back" on the suggestion coercion is something all medical staff are trained in spotting.
"I'm the kind of doctor who believes there is nothing to be gained by sugar-coating reality...about shortcomings, failings, areas where my profession the rest of the NHS are getting things wrong", she tells MPs.
"It is my clinical experience that not only are the majority of doctors not necessarily trained in spotting coercion explicitly, they're often not trained explicitly in having so-called advanced care planning conversations with patients around the topic of death and dying."'

MPs’ committee votes to scrap High Court judge approval in assisted dying Bill
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/high-court-mps-danny-kruger-labour-life-b1216326.html

Last month, Ms Leadbeater revealed her proposals to scrap the High Court approval, to be replaced by an assisted dying commission and expert panels. Opposition critics said proposed changes would result in it being “massively watered down”.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bill-high-court-naz-shah-change-parliament-b2713235.html

Not saying he is someone to be trusted but he has been one of the lone voices saying everything is being rushed through
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1899561567882187210.html

Excellent from Ellie Cumbo

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1900142270067753141.html

This is really depressing because so many people are now pointing out that this committee process is just not working.

And whether it is just plain incompetence, or this bizarre and frightening push to rush it through, it just isn't acceptable. For any new law. Let alone one that is about having the authority to authorise death.

Am starting to wonder if it would be possible to start a Parliament petition to say its needs to stop and the process restart under better, more experienced people.

Very true, no inquest into the unexpected death of ms so and so because it was all approved by the doctor and a panel.

It is an echo of the days when a husband need only pay 2 doctors to certify his wife or daughter as insane to get them locked up for life. Most of these women/girls were mentally ill, but had been domestically abused and this was a legal way for their abuser to discard them and start fresh with new victims.

It does now, but it will be relaxed as the requirement to take pills by your own hand will be protested as discriminatory towards people who use feeding tubes or subsist on IV nutrition due their disabilities or terminal health condition. It will quickly expand to a healthcare person pushing the plunger on a feeding tube or injecting drugs into an IV.

This is what has happened everywhere else where assisted dying has become legalised.

https://www.gponline.com/rcgp-moves-neutral-position-assisted-dying/article/1910209
The RCGP has changed its stance on assisted dying after its council voted to move to a position of neither supporting nor opposing a change in the law on the issue.

'I said I'd reserve judgment &
wait for the committee to do its work, despite my concerns.

I'm now clear: in 15+ years of a policy career, I've never seen a Bill less up to scratch. The subject is simply too important & complicated for Parliament's quickest & dirtiest process.'

Ellie Cumbo

Really? Then it's not assisted dying though. If someone else is doing it, how can we be sure it's what the person wants?

It is still considered assisted dying, even though you are right as this would be an expansion from assisted suicide into euthanasia and even more open to abuse.

Assisted dying is defined as including both assisted suicide and euthanasia.

The activists claiming our assisted dying bill was only ever intended to cover assisted suicide of terminally ill were fibbing.

Their intent is clear in their choice of naming it the “Assisted Dying Bill” instead of “Assisted Suicide Bill” and the use of the terminology of assisted dying throughout.

How very interesting. My dad has oseopagal cancer and can't swallow and his hands are weak so I did wonder how someone like him would be able do it.

Well that's all we all want, to be sure that it's what the person wants, but it gets murkier and murkier.

If anyone questions proposals then there's an outbreak of emotional blackmail about people being in pain and distress and so on and how unkind and cruel etc.

@SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice isn't wrong imo when she talks about parallels with history, and how women were removed from society by spouses and willing doctors.

I am sorry to hear about your dad and his condition. 🌺

Thanks. Thing is, we were told he only had days left in Dec and 3 months on he is still with us. Imo the doctors don't really know how individuals will respond and are going to work on averages.

I agree. I’m a breast cancer patient in a support group of women.

The personal life stories go from the extremes of thought they were cancer free and planning a future of 20+yrs, seeing their kids graduate and so on to weeks later they find out they have secondary breast cancer of the spine or brain and only have a few months to live (and we sadly do lose them). Others who were told nothing more could be done but they’d do chemo to slow the tumours down to buy them a last Christmas with their kids to then the chemo working a miracle, the tumours shrinking so much that surgery is possible and then getting through radiotherapy and suddenly realising that their “last” Christmas was 3yrs ago and the cancer not only is gone, but hasn’t come back….and they’re daring to dream of a life after cancer.

It is one of the very scary things about cancer, we call it sniper’s alley as there isn’t any certainty.

The doctors have a good handle on things, but they can’t know everything and sometimes what happens isn’t what the doctor thought would happen - for good or bad.

@Arran2024 I'm so sorry, that's so hard for you all, your Dad has a great daughter in you it seems. Life does some rotten things to very good people.

@SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice I remember wanting to get to see my children finish school. Decades on now, and I'm still here, by a quirk of fate.

Terfy women never seem to behave as expected.

My aunt, in her late 60s, wouldn't see doctors - she was terrified of them. She knew she was extremely ill but didn't say anything. She organised the usual Christmas for her family - they thought she was a bit quiet but didn't suspect a thing. But she collapsed that evening and she was rushed to hospital. Breat cancer. She was given 2 days to live.

Everyone was horrified - it was such a shock. Anyway, long story, but three months later they figured she might as well go home. And she lived for another 10 years.

Then my 84 year old mum, who had dementia, had a stroke and covid and was moved to an end of life care facility, where she lived for another 14 months. No one could believe it.

So I am really suspicious of end of life / how long is left diagnoses.

Sarah Ditum has written about the bill and some pretty dirty politicking: Kim Leadbetter’s aide silently and uninvited attended a private meeting on women’s vulnerability to assisted dying, to some outrage from women. The Times]

Kim could just have listened to our podcasts recorded afterwards with the MP who led the meeting

plus weekend action The Other Half are asking you to write to your MP and ask them to attend Jess Asato MPs even on safeguarding women in assisted dying. All you need is here https://theotherhalf.uk/write-to-your-mp-on-ad

Sorry Times link here, free to read this weekend
https://www.thetimes.com/article/ea34b5bb-b808-4282-bc03-a4a8b675d0ff?shareToken=6dc84b1bbf3cc4f861a187282ba6d9e7

This site is really useful for writing to represantatives including MPs:

www.writetothem.com/

As a brief aside, status report on Scotland's parallel Assisted Dying Bill:

'Stage 1 Deadline

On 5 February 2025, Parliament agreed motion S6M-16341, that consideration of the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill at Stage 1 be completed by 23 May 2025.

https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/s6/assisted-dying-for-terminally-ill-adults-scotland-bill

A call for views in November last year got 13,500 responses. 10k in support. 3.5k strongly opposed.

Uncertainty as to whether it would be reserved:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g5w299npjo

'Proposed legislation to allow assisted dying in Scotland is outside Holyrood's powers, the Scottish government has claimed.
Health Secretary Neil Gray said issues relating to lethal drugs were reserved to Westminster.
He said it was the government’s view that “the bill in its current form is outside the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament”.
Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur, who tabled the bill, said he was "very confident" that the UK and Scottish governments would work together to ensure it becomes law if backed by MSPs.'

Scottish voters may wish to write to their MSPs to raise any concerns they have - I didn't see this consultation had happened until today.

Thoughtful and well-expressed from Ditum.

Archive

archive.ph/e0eKw

Reading the last couple of pages, I so much wanted a 'shocked face' React button to press. Something like this, maybe.

I read that list, mentally changing the wording to the opposite, as in, 'So you don't need to do X,' or 'So it's OK to do Y'. It made it even more horrifying.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/assisted-dying-laws-could-be-lethal-weapon-for-domestic-abusers-msps-warned-5033055

'Assisted dying laws could be ‘lethal weapon’ for domestic abusers, MSPs warned'

'Campaigners against domestic violence have warned proposed new assisted dying laws could provide a "potentially lethal weapon" for abusers.
Concerns have been raised with MSPs that women living with an abusive partner who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness could be "coerced into consenting to an assisted death".
Dr Anni Donaldson , an honorary research fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow who specialises in the issue of domestic abuse, and Isabelle Kerr , the chief executive of the Beira's Place support service in Edinburgh for women who have suffered sexual assault, said they are "not aware" if any consideration has been given to the impact the proposed new law could have on the "many Scottish women in this situation".'

That Sarah Ditum article is well written. Leadbeater seems to have no shame sending an aide to sneak in to listen to a private meeting. I did give a hollow laugh at her excuse that she thought that anyone could sit in. After she excluded so many disability and concerned groups from her own "consultations".

Her and her supporters are certainly determined to do their bit on saving on the Welfare Bill. Her keeness to encourage State supported suicides seems to be going in hand with proposed cuts and reforms which are causing so many serious stress.

More shake ups. Always about saving money. Never about genuine support or tackling poverty, inequity, or VAWAG.

Leadbeater's role in this reminds me of the Central Committee scenes in Armando Ianucci's Death of Stalin.