I’m disappointed that you have not found my arguments “compelling”. Perhaps you will find the views of Professor Steve Field, the Chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, more persuasive? Please see his article on The Guardian website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2009/jun/22/assisted-suicide-uk-nhs

David: You mention the Netherlands but not Oregon. Any reason for that?

Re. the polls – it would be easy to find if I knew what polling companies had carried out these polls and when!

I don’t believe I am misunderstanding your point. I don’t think that you are seeing the connection. You seem to be saying that a person taking the decision to die with the help of another is making a decision that affects no-one else. In doing so you are denying the truth of the interconnectedness of human society – “no-one is an island”. To hark back to the Daniel James situation, the very fact that we are discussing it proves my point that more people than just Daniel James himself have been affected by his “purely personal” decision. These may include, perhaps, many vulnerable people, who are maybe now looking at their own situations in a “second-class” light and considering a self-destructive path that otherwise they may not have embarked on. This is not a cause for rejoicing.

I would really urge you to read the links I posted above. They demonstrate what will happen if we carry on down this path – because they have already happened in the Netherlands and history has an uncanny way of repeating itself (and note that the Dutch Law had plenty of “safeguards” which turned out to be nothing of the sort)

On the use of polling all companies keep their data and publish the full details and exact wording on their websites which are easy to find. Obviously I could quibble about individual politicians presenting any poll as meaning something other than the wording of the question. Many polls taken as a whole is rather different.

Your comments about catholic adoption agencies or ‘fiddling expenses, beating up old ladies’ misunderstands my point. An individual deciding they wish to die directly affects them and they are deciding something wholly personal so the state has no proper place. In your example the catholic agency was not deciding something about itself or personal but of a child(dren) in the care of the state. The child is the individual at the centre whose interests are in question. Likewise the ‘old lady’ or the person/company/government being defrauded have rights to be protected from the individual. The person committing the acts you suggest is not making a decision that is purely personal.

I do not accept that the position of the law with regards to assisted suicide is absurd. The “offence” is one of killing another person, which is totally consistent with the legal view towards murder. The fact that the person you’re killing has asked you to do it doesn’t change the fact that you’re killing another person.

With regards to polls, I would like to cite the Walton Committee (Report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics, chaired by Lord Walton, 17 Feb 1994) which was presented with claims that in the UK 79% of the population would like to see voluntary euthanasia legalised. But they took this result with a “pinch of salt” because the question in fact asked “Should the law allow adults to receive medical help to a peaceful death?”. The queston did not refer to medical killing. Similarly, the 1997 British Social Attitudes Survey quotes a figure of 86% in favour of euthanasia – this is based on the proportion of people who agreed that ‘euthanasia’ should be available for a person who is “incurable, on life support machine, never expected to regain consciousness”. Turning off a life-support machine is not euthanasia. I would be interested to learn the exact wording of the questions used in the surveys mentioned above.

You say that you find offensive the notion that one should interfere with another’s decision on the basis of one’s morality. Then, to be consistent, I would be confident in assuming that you also find offensive the fact that Catholic adoption agencies have had to close, despite their unrivalled reputation in finding homes for the most difficult-to-place children, because the state has imposed its “morality”, regarding the rights of same-sex couples to adopt, on those who believe this to be wrong?

You say that “It’s not the proper role of the state to decide that this personal decision is public property”. What you appear to be saying is that the state should have no right to interfere with anyone’s personal decisions to act however they wish to, be it fiddling expenses, beating up old ladies, abusing children, killing ill and disabled people etc etc. If you take your argument to its logical conclusion, what you are in fact advocating is anarchy. A legal system will always determine what is “acceptable” and “unacceptable” within its jurisdiction. Law, by its very nature, imposes a certain “morality” on those who are subject to it – the morality of those who happen to be in power. It’s no good saying you find this offensive as the freedoms you currently enjoy depend on it. Frankly I would far rather live under a legal system, the laws of which were guided by a set of values based on God’s love for mankind, confident in the knowledge that He knows what’s best for us, than the alternative.

If you’re interested in the “other side of the argument”, please see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article6513758.ece and http://www.spuc.org.uk/documents/papers/euthanasia.pdf

Lord Norton, I don’t accept the arguments for legislation are emotional at all although ultimately have their origins in love and respect. Indeed they are largely cognitive, based on logic and legislative respect for the autonomy of the individual. No-one has to participate in this unless they choose to. There is absolutely no evidence of a ‘slippery slope’, of vulnerable people being persuaded to die in any of the existing jurisdictions where legislation exists.

David: Many/some (conventional) suicide attempts are cries for help or where they are real ‘botched’ such that through discovery or their incompetence they survive. The state prior to the ’61 suicide act was quite vindictive at prosecuting and imprisoning people who survived. This was driven in part by the established church view and the prevailing state theology at the time. The law, as was, had unacceptable consequences which thankfully parliament after many attempts repealed. However the act uniquely, as I said, created an offence to assist someone to do something that was/is not an offence. This is an absurd position for the law to be in.

Yes Minister was an example of the use of loaded questions not of proper polling. There are many reputable firms out there that have asked questions on this subject. It is a long standing truism that a ‘rogue poll’ is one you disagree with. Vague attacks on polling does not an argument make.

The point about the Daniel James case is that he was an adult, was perfectly clear of his view of what quality of life he wanted and he made that decision. It’s not the proper role of the state to decide that this personal decision is public property. I might not agree with his decision but the idea that I have any right to inter fear in that decision on the basis of my personal morality is offensive. We are/were not living his life to make such a choice. (Fwiw Brian Moore wrote an moving piece at the time)

Britain is no longer a society whose laws are dominated by Christian theology and far from such great tragedy as you suggest many minority groups are consequently free from oppressive laws. Private morality or immorality is not the place of the state. You/the state/friends/family are perfectly free to ‘offer love, help and support’ but a person in unbearable pain may wish that help to be in the form of either assisting them to die domestically or abroad. Or is the ‘love, help and support’ conditional on you approving of their wishes?

The subject of assisted suicide is, by its very nature, an emotional one. Is the reason that those people, who have gone abroad with relatives to help them die, have not been prosecuted not down to an emotional response to the situation of these relatives? It seems to me that the arguments in favour of assisted suicide are primarily emotional ones, so to discount arguments against the amendments because they are emotional in nature would appear to employ double standards.

Croft mentioned how extaordinary it is that one could be guilty of the crime of assisting suicide when suicide is not a crime in itself. Does Croft not see that criminalising suicide would be rather a waste of time as the crown can hardly prosecute somebody who’s dead?

As regards polls and public opinion – firstly (as hilariously demonstrated on Yes Minister many years ago) the way pollsters word their questions can have a huge impact on the results of the poll. Polls basically are untrustworthy. Secondly, the public are only really hearing one side of the argument from the media and were they to hear the other side of the argument to the same degree we might see a change in public opinion (and I believe its naive to think that the public in general are not heavily influenced by the media).

I think it important to point out that the role of legislation is not just to “try and stop people doing things and punish them if they do”. Legislation, for better or worse, defines what we as a society believe is acceptable. When people, as in the case of the family of Daniel James, do something which is defined by our legislation as unacceptable, we (or at least those responsible for upholding our legislation) have a choice whether or not to prosecute. In this case, and in many other cases of law-breaking for many other laws, a compassionate decision was made not to prosecute. This is not an argument for changing the law. Once we change the law we are saying, as a society, that assisted suicide is acceptable. The next obvious step will be its legalisation here. How long then will it be before the most vulnerable in our society: the disabled, the terminally ill, the long-term ill, the elderly, are viewed by society as “a burden”, as a not “happy and productive person who can partake in the life of the world”. How many people in our society will be influenced into looking at their vulnerable relatives, who are in need of love, care, help and support, as burdens who are clearly “undergoing tremendous suffering” and would surely be better off dead? How many of the ill will feel the weight of public opinion regarding their situation and feel obliged to “do the right thing”?

Regarding Daniel James, I am not going to sit in judgement on either him or his family. However, I do worry about the “message” that this is sending out to others who find themselves in a similar situation. Daniel is quoted as not wanting to live “a second class existence”. It’s a shame that people around him could not convince him that his life was not “second class”, that as a human being he had just as much dignity after his accident as before. Once we start defining people’s “class of existence” or their “dignity” on what they can do for themselves or their state of health we are on a very dangerous path.

When I hear people “taking a dim view of religious groups foisting their world-view on others” that’s like a red rag to a bull! Yes, I am religious, I’m Christian and absolutely convinced of the truth of Christianity, not through blind faith but through a combination of reason and faith. Up until relatively recently, our laws have been based primarily on Christian values and those Christian values have defined the “civilised” in our civlised society. As, in our laws, we have drifted away from Christian values, so has our society drifted further into moral decline. For those reading this who don’t agree – take off the blinkers and look around!

I am very concerned when I hear comments like “But what’s so great about people that their life is worth preserving against their will?” Life is precious and every life is worth living. If somebody says that want to die (and I myself, having suffered depression, have been in the position where death actually seems preferable to what I was going through), it’s a cry for help and we, as a society, should be there to offer love, help and support, not a one-way ticket to Switzerland.

Instead I am pointing out the very real change in expectations which occurs when euthanasia is normalized. One only needs to look at abortion to see similar effects. There was a time when an unmarried woman who found herself with an unwanted pregnancy might have considered adoption or the profound change to her life that would come with having a child. But, now, in the form of abortion, an ‘easier’ option exists. And no can deny that a woman in such a position feels pressure to abort for no other reason than it is now considered the ‘normal’ option for someone in such a position.

If we recognize that such a phenomena exists in the case of abortion how could anyone deny that it would happen in the case of euthanasia? Moreover while a young working woman enjoys substantial autonomy and independence in her daily life, a terminally ill patient does not. There is a substantial asymmetry that exists between terminally ill patient and caregiver. How then can anyone fail to understand that such a pressure will be felt and internalized by a patient and in such a way that it might very well be said to interfere with one’s ability to make a decision?