So, for one last time, before we vote on Assisted Dying on Friday 29th November, be absolutely clear what we are voting on: We are voting to change the law to allow doctors to lawfully assist their patients to kill themselves.
That is the only question that need concern us. The rest of the bill is irrelevant. It contains a number ‘safeguards’: a prognosis of death within six months; confirmation by two doctors; Oversight by a judge. The purpose of these safeguards is solely to assuage the reservations of MPs with tender consciences and so to get the bill over the line. The safeguards cannot possibly endure. They will be swiftly swept aside by subsequent changes to the law.
If you concede that doctors should be allowed to help their patients kill themselves in order to end their suffering, then how can you possibly sustain a distinction between those who are within six months of death and those who are not yet quite there. If it is suffering that we are seeking to end, then how can we demand that someone endure it until they are within six months of death. There is no logic to it at all.
The bill is about changing the nature of medicine so that it can deliberately kill as well as cure.
That is the only question that need concern us. The rest of the bill is irrelevant. It contains a number ‘safeguards’: a prognosis of death within six months; confirmation by two doctors; Oversight by a judge. The purpose of these safeguards is solely to assuage the reservations of MPs with tender consciences and so to get the bill over the line. The safeguards cannot possibly endure. They will be swiftly swept aside by subsequent changes to the law.
If you concede that doctors should be allowed to help their patients kill themselves in order to end their suffering, then how can you possibly sustain a distinction between those who are within six months of death and those who are not yet quite there. If it is suffering that we are seeking to end, then how can we demand that someone endure it until they are within six months of death. There is no logic to it at all.
The bill is about changing the nature of medicine so that it can deliberately kill as well as cure.
A number of constituents have written to tell me that I must vote in accordance with their opinion to support the Bill. If I were bound to support the majority of those who have expressed an opinion to me, and hundreds have, then I would have to vote against the bill because, by a factor of twenty to one, those opinions have been against the Bill. But I am not so bound. The chief duty that I owe to my constituents is my judgement. I must not be a prisoner to any lobby, even were it to shout loudest.
My duty is also to represent the vast majority of my constituents who have yet to express any opinion at all. I can only do that, of course, by listening, but -having done so- by making up my own mind.
My duty is also to represent the vast majority of my constituents who have yet to express any opinion at all. I can only do that, of course, by listening, but -having done so- by making up my own mind.