My Lords, on Amendment 65, on capacity, it is hard to imagine how anybody who has just been told that they have less than six months to live, and who is in such pain that they do not want to continue living, should have absolutely no impairment or disturbance of the mind. This must be part of the condition—but I am not convinced that it would necessarily cloud or impair their judgment. When a person gets close to death, it clarifies the mind rather than clouds it, and gives them much more of an incentive to make decisions that will affect them in a very real way.
On the sense of obligation or duty to others, at the risk of sounding too much like a Methodist minister, there used to be in our Methodist hymnbook a hymn which started:
“Rejoice for a brother deceased;
Our loss is his infinite gain”.
There are occasions when people, feeling not just a duty to others but a delight and a joy in leaving behind a mortal body in order to find a fullness of life—which some of us already experience—will want to do so at the moment of their death.