Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, terminally ill people are vulnerable people—afraid and apprehensive of approaching death and the manner of its arrival. They are very sensitive to suggestion and there is no shortage of potential coercive influences, some apparent, some less so. Most insidious is the atmosphere created by the environment in which the sick patient finds him or herself. Acceptance by the law of the deliberate termination of life, albeit at the patient’s request, could create an ambience in which the patient felt pressured to comply. The feeling of being a burden on others is familiar to many elderly and disabled people, and it would be all too easy for a right to opt for a deliberate death to become a duty to do so for the sake of others. The exception would then become normal, irrespective of the real wishes and welfare of the patient. I do not doubt the sincerity of the sponsors of this Bill but I deplore what I see as their naivety. In seeking to change the law in order to help a small number of people to end their lives voluntarily within the law, they will imperil many others by creating a presumption that life has become worthless, or inconvenient to others, as a means of inducement to end their lives. That seems to me quite indefensible. Coercive pressures could change measures intended to be caring into aggressive ones against the terminally ill, the aged and the handicapped, who would rightly feel threatened in a way that no civilised society should accept. I believe that that argument alone is sufficient reason to reject the Bill. I support the amendment.