Originally published on eve.gd on 14 October 2024, last updated 6 September 2026.
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The UK currently has an assisted dying bill going through parliament and I am very conflicted about it. On the one hand, I am a member of DIGNITAS, the organization that supports assisted dying and that runs a “clinic” in Switzerland to which members who are terminally ill can travel to end their lives. I have no desire for the end of my life to be a mess of literally unbearable suffering and nausea, even with palliative care. I support assisted dying for me.
an assisted dying bill going through parliament
However, it brings me no great pleasure to say that I do not think the conditions are right in the UK, at this point, for such a bill to succeed. I agree with the many disability advocates who fear that the system will be misused and that people will feel coerced into ending their lives so that they are not a “burden” on others. It is also true that the assisted dying bill appears to devalue certain lives and to say that they are not worth living, thus giving the alternative option of death.
I also think that people will find themselves taking this route because treatment options are not good enough. For example, over 100,000 people every year cannot access the palliative care that they need, which can result in hideous, uncontrolled agonies of death. Many people, myself included, would choose assisted dying over that. But the political choice to run down our healthcare systems so that they cannot cope with our needs is not a good enough reason to introduce assisted suicide. There should, instead, first be greater pressure to improve palliative care provision.
over 100,000 people every year cannot access the palliative care that they need
Furthermore, the welfare state in this country is so weak right now that many disabled people in the UK live in abject poverty. The financial life to which you can be condemned as a disabled person, unable to claim even enough to eat and live properly, although you are too ill to work, is so devoid of dignity that many would doubtless choose to end their lives, with state assistance. This is a disgusting position. Disabled people should be able to live decent lives and we should lobby for a welfare state that is strong enough to support this. Until this situation is resolved, the potential for abuse of an assisted dying law is far too great.
many disabled people in the UK live in abject poverty
Finally, there’s also the challenging nature of defining terminal conditions. Technically, my kidney failure – end-stage renal disease – is so named because it is terminal and incredibly deadly; just a couple of missed dialysis sessions could be enough to kill me. On the other hand, though, with dialysis, I could live up to 20 years. So who gets to benefit from this bill? How do you define a terminal condition? Terminal “without treatment”? If that’s the case, then many conditions, such as pneumonia, would qualify, even though they may be eminently treatable with antibiotics. The bill gets around this by saying “people with only six months to live”, but that then doesn’t help a range of people who might want it and it doesn’t get around the definition of this life expectancy prognosis. Is my prognosis two weeks or twenty years?
I could live up to 20 years
help a range of people who might want it
It is, thus, with great sadness that I say that I cannot support this assisted dying bill. Not really due to my situation, but because of what it might do to thousands of others. This is part of what it means to operate in a society; sometimes what is good for an individual (me) is potentially terrible when scaled to a population. Hence, I say: fix the welfare state; fix palliative care; define terminal conditions and treatment paths better and come back then. There’s so much that we need to do better and right before we can even start to have this discussion.
This reference list has been generated, in many cases, through an automated process and may therefore contain errors or incomplete metadata. It is provided purely as assistance for finding the items mentioned within this post.
1. ‘65% of adults are worried about access to palliative care’, King's College London, 29 April 2024 <https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/65-of-adults-are-worried-about-access-to-palliative-care>
2. ‘Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bill [HL]’, UK Parliament <https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3741>
3. Booth, Robert, ‘Expected assisted dying bill no use to Parkinson's patients, ex-judge says’, The Guardian, 13 October 2024 <https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/13/expected-assisted-dying-bill-no-use-to-parkinsons-patients-nicholas-mostyn>
4. Ryan, Frances, Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People, Verso <https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/729-crippled>
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/65-of-adults-are-worried-about-access-to-palliative-care
https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3741
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/13/expected-assisted-dying-bill-no-use-to-parkinsons-patients-nicholas-mostyn
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/729-crippled