Assisted dying: MPs afraid to change law despite public support

In 2017, my beloved dad succumbed to cancer. In his final hours of being conscious he suffered and pleaded for death. He whimpered like a stuck animal or a child. It was harrowing and left me feeling like a helpless little boy. My dad had been lucky, to an extent, because in his ten-year battle with cancer he hadn’t suffered the intense, unbearable pain that he felt on his final day. He did, however, suffer as the pace of his physical decline picked up in his final months. His quality had life had diminished totally as his suffering increased and all of life’s pleasures became unavailable to him. He was fed up with life.

I thought about this recently as assisted dying returned to the political agenda. It pops up every few years only for the debate to lead nowhere as MP’s cower away from bringing about change that the public support. Although it’s a complex and contentious issue, public opinion on the matter is very clear. In 2019, a YouGov study on the beliefs of the left and right wing showed that support for assisted dying was the nation’s most closely bipartisan view. 

The results of research released in August shows overwhelming public support for assisted suicide for patients suffering from a terminal illness. MPs remain divided on the issue and completely out of step with the public. Almost three quarters of Britons (73%) think the law should be changed to allow doctors to assist in the suicide of someone suffering from a terminal illness, including 74% of Conservative voters and 76% of Labour voters. However, just 35% of MPs feel the same way. 

Next month, Baroness Meacher, the crossbench peer, will introduce a new bill into the House of Lords, the fourth to go before parliament in the last 15 years. The Times has been exploring the issue, with Matthew Syed and Daniel Finkelstein writing in support of change and Daniel Kruger MP arguing against it. This is one of those issues I have been uncertain of, but as I read arguments in favour of assisted dying, I realised I am now firmly in the pro camp.  

I was inspired to reflect further on the issue after my dad’s final day, the day I had been fearing for as long as I can remember. I watched him draw his last breath. Ultimately, he was assisted to die, oops, sorry, I mean he was given doses of morphine continually to ‘manage his pain’ until it killed him.

You see, when it becomes obvious to everyone in the room that the patient is on their last legs, has no desire to suffer anymore, and has reached a stage in their decline when reviving them to live another day would be an act of cruelty, they are often offered so much pain relief that it’s the morphine pumping through their veins that finishes them off.  

And for that we should be grateful.  

In his final weeks, he had a hospital bed in his living room. He spent much of his time asleep and his ability to do the things he enjoyed were finally taken from him. Then the real indignity of his physical state began to kick in. I remember one day I was looking after him and I popped out to the shop to get us something to eat for dinner. I received a text: dad was distressed as I hadn’t shut the front door properly, it had blown open and he was cold. He could no longer stand up on his own volition, my big, strong, strapping dad. It broke my heart. I had to help him out of his seat like a man thirty years his senior.

When, weeks later, he went into our local community hospital in the knowledge he was unlikely to come out, I have no doubt this steep decline in his health and quality of life factored into his pleading to the nurses to help him die. Of course, the more immediate problem was the extreme pain he was suffering, but his final months had already taken his will to live.

“Just knock me out!’ he said, before being administered more morphine. When he woke, eyes glazed over and in agonising pain, he whimpered: “I just wanna go”. I’ll never forget those words and the desperate tone in which they were said. My distraught mum asked the nurse to help in language deemed too direct. She was steered away from literally asking for help to end his life, because assisted dying is illegal.

Eventually, after a visit from a doctor, he was given further doses of morphine to “manage his pain”. He spent the last three hours of life entirely within the confines of his own, morphine-addled mind. Then his breathing became increasingly laboured before he basically suffocated and choked on his own saliva which he could no longer swallow. Different choices could have been made, his life could possibly have been extended, but it would have been a grim extension of a life no longer worth living.

It is difficult to believe that similar scenarios don’t play out up and down the country. My mum told me grandad was helped on his way with similar methods. If assisted dying is already happening, but unregulated, and people are even able to make the trip to countries where it is legal, should we not look at this issue again?

Public opinion has shifted towards legalising assisted dying, so it’s likely only a matter of time now. Now less time should be spent arguing about the moral principle and we should move on to discussing how exactly assisted dying would work in this country. For sick people who feel like a burden to their families, or sick people who have bad actors within their family, there is a risk of going down this route when it isn’t yet necessary. Disabled people will also need protection as they already don’t receive equal treatment in this country.

There will need to be safeguards, and there should certainly be no rush to change the law. However, the possibility of change must be given serious consideration so that people can die with dignity and in peace rather than have their suffering prolonged as their quality of life is diminished to nothing.