Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the supporters of the Motion emphasise the technical and modest parameters of the proposed laws. However, since I have been in this House, I have endlessly been told that legislative changes send important messages, and it is the possible messages of this Bill which lead me to oppose it.

Taking a step back: what is our message if we encounter someone who implores us to help as they are suffering unbearably, who tells us they are in intense pain and their life is not worth living, who is disgusted by their own body and who begs for help to take control over how and where they die? We are urged here to be compassionate and concede to these understandable suicidal thoughts. However, perhaps noble Lords might pause more if they knew that these pleas are taken from a self-harming site, from teenagers on message boards on online suicide sites, and they include an anorexic young woman who loathes her body and a bullied, despairing young man about to jump off a bridge. Note that in their minds they are suffering just as much pain as the terminally ill citizens the Bill addresses.

In my view, when anyone of any age says they want to die, there is only one message: we cry out loud, “Don’t do it!” We must remain loyal to the value of their life and not accede to their subjective wishes, however heartfelt. Our message should be, “If you’re in unbearable pain, let society hold your hand, mop your brow, surround you with a genuine protective ring of social solidarity”—with palliative care, of course. We must also say, “However malfunctioning your body, or demented or disturbed your mind, you are still you and every moment you are alive is precious to us all—and you are not a burden.”

A note to my fellow libertarians: your agency, autonomy and desire for control will not be honoured by handing over your death to doctors, the law courts and the state.

What message we send matters because of two powerful contemporary trends. First, younger generations are being inculcated with and have internalised a new form of cultural pessimism. Too many are consumed by dystopian, angst-ridden fears of the future, and anxiety and mental health problems are spiralling. Our task surely must be to reassure: to make a positive, life-affirming case for the value and worth of human life, whatever the challenges, circumstances or discomfort —the very opposite of the message of the Bill.

Secondly, for those same young people, psychological and physical pain are often interchangeable. That erosion of the distinction of types of harms is causing major free speech disputes, when words and ideas are treated on a par with violence. Regardless of my qualms about that approach, it is now a social norm. So to those who say, “Don’t worry, this law will never lead to those suffering mental anguish being allowed access to state-endorsed assisted death”, I say that I am just not convinced—and that is just one of the many reasons why I am firmly against the Bill.