Today MPs will vote again on Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill. It’s an important debate that will rightly generate strong emotions since the matter being discussed is one that strikes at the heart of what it is to be human.
Opinions of course differ wildly, and I have dear friends who I know to be kind and considerate people who are in favour of assisted dying and hope that the bill will be passed. And I trust they will remain my friends irrespective of the outcome of today’s debate.
But as for me, I am opposed to the bill and have written previously why I hope that it won’t be passed. This is not only because of my religious beliefs but also because of what, being one myself, I believe regarding what it is to be human.
But one final thought – regarding what is sometimes called the slippery slope.
Some don’t consider the incline that we are currently standing atop to be all that precarious, confident that the passing of the bill will not lead to a situation when, over time, the conditions necessary for assisted dying to be permitted will lessen such that far more people will end their own life than was originally intended.
But history suggests otherwise.
Take the 1967 Abortion Act that legalised termination of pregnancy when two doctors agreed that the continuation of a pregnancy would pose a greater risk to the woman’s physical or mental health than if that pregnancy were terminated, or if there was a substantial risk that the child would be born with severe physical or mental abnormalities.
Because, as well as creating all manner of inconsistencies in the way we care for unborn children, the act has brought us to where we are today – a place where we have abortion on demand.
Throughout my thirty plus years working as a doctor, I never heard of a request for termination being turned down, and some years ago it made headlines that termination clinics were run with a stack of pre-signed forms approving termination – a state of affairs that suggests that individual cases are not being individually considered.
Little wonder then that in 2022, there were 251,377 abortions for women in England and Wales, the highest number since the Abortion Act was introduced.
So then, the slope was indeed slippery when it came to termination of pregnancy – can we really be sure it wont be any less slippery when it comes to assisted dying.
It’s my fervent hope that we never find out.
Related posts:
To read ‘Assisted Dying – we’ll need to be happier to help’, click here
To read ‘Assisted Dying in the light of the Cross’, click here
To read ‘More Severed Thinking’, click here
To read ‘The Abolition of General Practice’, click here
Some musings 
I agree , better palliative care is wh
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