Pros and cons of legalising assisted dying in the UK

The bill to legalise assisted dying in the UK is continuing its path through Parliament, with a cross-party committee of MPs now taking evidence and discussing possible amendments.

The controversial Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which would make it legal for people who are over 18 and terminally ill to receive assistance to end their life, passed a second reading in November after MPs were given a free vote. While hailed as a landmark moment by campaigners, the bill still faces "significant hurdles" in the Commons and the Lords for it to become law, said The Guardian, with dozens of MPs saying they might vote down a third and final reading unless changes are made.

The bill sets out specific requirements for who is eligible to receive assistance, including the need to have the "mental capacity to make a choice" and that they are "expected to die within six months". Two independent doctors must make assessments before a high court judge makes a final ruling.

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Assisted dying is a general term that includes euthanasia and assisted suicide. Euthanasia is when a doctor ends a patient's life, while assisted suicide is when a patient ends their own life with a doctor's help.

It is a controversial issue for legislatures worldwide, with widely cited arguments both for and against a practice that is legal in some countries while totally taboo in others.

Currently banned in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – although illegal in Scotland, there is no specific criminal offence of assisting a suicide – it carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.

Pro: an end to suffering

Allowing patients to end their suffering is not only morally justified but also essential to upholding the right to personal and bodily autonomy, advocates argue.

A major parliamentary inquiry set up in 2023 to explore whether assisted dying should be legalised in the UK received tens of thousands of submissions from people facing "uncontrollable" pain and "unbearable suffering", which palliative care alone cannot fix, The Guardian reported.

Paul Lamb, a paralysed former builder from Leeds who died in June 2021, had lost his legal case to challenge UK laws on assisted dying seven months earlier.

"I cannot understand, in a civilised society like ours, why I should be forced to suffer when millions of people around the world already have the choice I asked for," he told the BBC in November 2020.

Con: losing legal protection

It is currently a criminal offence under the 1961 Suicide Act to help someone take their own life, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Some people believe that legalising euthanasia would put too much power in the hands of doctors, who could abuse their position, or relatives.

Rita Marker, the former executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in the US who died last year, argued: "Euthanasia and assisted suicide are not about the right to die. They are about the right to kill."

Former Paralympic athlete Tanni Grey-Thompson said that for many disabled people, a law change would see their "choice" removed because of the rising cost of health and social care. People need to "understand the consequences of a law change", she said, because it could make disabled people believe the "only choice they have is to end their lives".

The UK's anti-euthanasia alliance Care Not Killing said that the law is also in place to protect the vulnerable "from being pressured into ending their lives".

Making her case against any law change, Ilora Finlay, a crossbench peer and palliative care physician, told the parliamentary inquiry that legalising euthanasia in Britain could result in between 5,800 and 58,000 assisted deaths a year, based on extrapolated data from countries where it is already legal. "Such demand would divert an already stretched workforce of NHS clinicians," she said.

Pro: ending 'mercy killings'

According to Dignity in Dying, 44% of people would break the law and help a loved one to die, risking 14 years in prison.

In 2023 the Crown Prosecution Service updated its guidance on so-called mercy killings and suicide pacts to reflect that there is no public interest in prosecuting individuals who end the life of someone who has made "a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision that they wished for their life to end".

Encouraging or assisting suicide is a crime that currently carries a maximum penalty of 14 years but prosecutions are "rare", said Humanists UK.

Campaigners claim that UK police are also increasingly turning a blind eye to people travelling to other countries to assist loved ones to end their life.

Con: 'slippery slope'

Opponents argue that normalising euthanasia would be a move towards legalised murder.

They say that even with "watertight qualifying criteria and safeguards" the law will be "expanded in time and the restrictions loosened", said The Guardian. A "pressing concern for lawyers" is "successful human rights challenges" by people who were not granted assisted dying, inevitably softening the law in a way which wasn't initially intended by MPs.

This "slippery slope is real", said James Mildred of Care (Christian Action Research and Education), which campaigns against assisted suicide. In a 2018 article in The Economist, Mildred cited "a steady increase year on year in the number of people being killed or helped to commit suicide by their doctors" in countries that have legalised assisted suicide, as the rules are loosened over time.

"Critics say this is happening in Canada," said New Scientist, "with the criteria for assisted dying having expanded once already and a further change planned." Canada, which introduced Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, in 2016, has seen the number of people choosing to end their life rise steadily ever since, with MAID deaths comprising 4.1% of all deaths in 2022.

Pro: shifting opinion

There has been a significant shift in recent years among both the public and professional medical opinion regarding assisted dying for people with a terminal illness.

According to a November YouGov poll, 73% of Britons believe "in principle" that assisted dying should be permitted in the UK, while 13% do not. Only a minority are opposed to it "in principle and in practice", while 19% say they support the principle but do not believe it is "possible to create adequate laws to regulate it".

A 2020 survey by Dignity in Dying revealed opinion was also shifting among doctors, with 50% "in favour of law change on assisted dying" and 39% opposed.

Con: religious concerns

Many religions and religious people, especially Catholics, believe that life is the ultimate gift and that taking that away is usurping power that belongs to God only.

In 2020, the Vatican reiterated the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to assisted suicide and euthanasia, describing them as "intrinsically evil" acts "in every situation or circumstance", The New York Times reported.

"I wouldn't have a problem with assisted dying if it could only be limited to those who truly want it," said Sonia Sodha, host of BBC Radio 4's "The Body Politic" podcast, in The Spectator. "But it goes beyond coercion and safeguarding, as important as those are: the relational nature of being human, and our shifting emotional states, undermine the notion of absolute autonomy in relation to something as profound as choosing to die."