Assisted Dying: Legislation

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, I am old enough to remember when it was said that pneumonia is the best friend of old people. We have long since passed that stage. Pneumonia is no longer a friend to anybody. Everybody survives it, whatever age they are. My gynaecologist told me, “Don’t go to the hospital to die. You will be put on machines and so on and be kept alive”. These are things that I remember from my youth. We are doing that. Medical advance has made it quite impossible for us to die naturally at the time we should die. That is a big problem.

I say to the right reverend Prelate that life is a gift only when it feels like a gift. It stops being a gift when you are suffering and do not wish to go on. As a man of faith, he cannot possibly advocate that we should stop life at any point, but we cannot all follow the example of the Son of God.