Assisted Dying: Legislation

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, when I was growing up, women largely fell pregnant when nature determined it and without access to safe, legal abortion. Today, science and humanity have combined to allow us to choose when to get pregnant and to plan our families. Sadly, we seem reluctant to allow that humanity and science to make our departure from this world as painless and as planned as our arrival. Colin Marriage, a man with terminal cancer, had excellent care in hospital but when he was told he had a week to live, he cried, not because it was so short but because it was so long. He did not want that last week of sickness, inability to sleep and pain. Why inflict such cruelty at that point on a man who is competent to choose? Surely that is the reason that the majority of GPs now feel that their college should abandon its opposition to assisted dying. I share that view.