*The Debatewise Blog
Assisted Suicide
Debbie Purdy has just failed in her attempt to clarify the law on assisted suicide. Debby is terminally ill with MS and wanted the High Court to guarantee her husband would not be arrested if he helped her go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland where they would administer a lethal injection.The difference to Debbie is now her life will be shorter. She is not willing to risk her husband going to jail so will travel to Switzerland under her own steam. If the ruling had gone in her favour she could have waited longer, waited until she was incapacitated, and got her husband to help.
To their credit the Law Lords expressed great sympathy with her plight but said the only solution was for the law to be clarified by an act of Parliament. They admitted their hands are tied, but regretted that an undertaking “many would regard as something that the law should permit” was still unclear
I’m one of those people. My grandma died last year at the age of 99 and whilst the first 97 years of her life were fantastic the last two were spent virtually blind, deaf and immobile. Every time I saw her the first thing she said was “I want to die”, a mantra she repeated constantly during her last few months in hospital.
I simply don’t understand why someone who wants to end their life should not be allowed to do so. Of course we need safeguards in place to ensure greedy people don’t bump off aging relatives and we need to distinguish between people in temporary pain and those in unremitting agony, But surely creating such a system can’t be beyond our abilities?