Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, said that his last Bill was,"““based on the principle of personal autonomy and patient choice, the right of each individual to decide for themselves how best he or she should lead their lives””." I assume that the same principle of personal autonomy underlines this Bill. Yet surely he agrees that society must have laws restraining us from doing those things that may harm others. On that basis alone, his ““personal autonomy”” justification fails. Unhappily people do attempt to commit suicide, and one does everything possible to prevent them succeeding, including trying to resuscitate them. Society views that as its duty. Although the individual is probably, in the words of the Bill, ““suffering unbearably””, society makes clear, in the time-worn words of successive coroners, that suicide indicates that the balance of the mind is disturbed, so society promptly suspends the suicidal individual’s personal autonomy. Yet this Bill, which would make it lawful to assist suicide for the terminally ill seemingly because, the moment one is told one is going to die shortly of natural causes, it is no longer to be considered a sign of mental imbalance that one should want to accelerate one’s death. In the case of the terminally ill, the Bill presumes mental capacity where, if the motivating trauma was different, that presumption would be the exact opposite. That just does not make sense. There, due to time constraints, I rest my case. I have received hundreds of letters, many of them laboriously hand-written, and hundreds of personal e-mails. None was abusive. Only one that was written to me was in support of this Bill, and I believe that reflects the will of the vast majority. I urge your Lordships to reject the Bill.