by Lucy Webster, Guardian
Proponents say the measures being debated in parliament will apply only to people who are on their deathbeds. That isn’t true
You’ve been deceived by the campaign for assisted dying. It has told you who the proposed law is for: people on their metaphorical deathbeds, no hope in sight, desperate to spare themselves and their loved ones the experience of an agonising death. And no wonder – these cases obviously merit sympathy and concern. These are the people campaigners want to talk about; this is the narrative that pushes people into unquestioning support for their cause.
But what of the people the law would include who they don’t want you to consider? Proponents keep saying that the bill is tightly drawn to exclude disabled people, because it limits eligibility to those with only six months to live. But this is patently false. The line between disability and illness – a line this bill relies on – is not a sharp distinction. It is blurry, ever-moving and dependent on social factors far more than biological ones. This knowledge complicates the simple narrative the pro campaign is reliant on.
Let’s take, for example, someone with a progressive neuromuscular condition such as motor neurone disease. Prognoses for such conditions are notoriously hard to get right, and even when everything is above board, it is not uncommon for people to vastly outlive their initial life expectancy. This, it is important to recognise, does not doom them to years of misery. With the right care, including social care and appropriate pain relief, people can and do live happy lives with terminal conditions. (Of course, one of the central issues is that many people do not receive such care.) But the many people living well with “terminal” conditions have been roundly excluded from the debate, because they do not fit the narrative. Instead, we are told that being terminally ill is, quite literally, a fate worse than death. The public – and MPs – need to ask themselves if they believe the wheelchair user they see enjoying time with friends in their local cafe would really be better off dead.