[Andy McDandy]

Downplaying downsides is arrogance?

No, it's risk management. Severity of impact vs likelihood of happening. Are adequate safeguards in place?

[The Weeping Angel]

By your logic we shouldn't have any laws against murder as people are going to murder people anyway. You talk of selfishness how is it selfish to want to protect vulnerable people from being gotten rid of because they're a considered burden on society. How is it selfish to be concerned about a bill which seems to be written on the back of an envelope.

[The Weeping Angel]

This from Sophy Ridge highlights a lot of the flaws around the bill.

They should do what Cameron did with gay marriage. Govt bill but give everyone a free vote.

[Abernathy]

Does it ? I listened to Ridge’s piece, and all it did was simply highlight part of the Committee stage of the bill. A part of the law-making process in which changes to legislation can be, and are, effected. Kruger’s brief contribution merely highlighted his own dogmatic opposition to the entire notion of choice for terminally ill people in any circumstances - something that has been very well documented previously.

Ridge might be right that the bill might not ultimately make it onto the statute book. But I don’t think that she highlighted any “flaws”. The Committee stage goes on.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I've never written this down before, but please bear with me as it has a direct connection to the topic.

In 1969 my father was in the late stages of terminal lung cancer. That's a bad death.
Our doctor (a great, chain-smoking, plain talking Scot) said that he would give my mother a prescription for morphine, enough for three months, and to be very careful not to give him an overdose as that would be fatal. I don't know if he winked or not. I suspect he might have.

She sent me, aged 19, to get the stuff from the chemist, but they were closed. I waited until they opened but when I got home I found that the district nurse had called, and seeing the state my father was in, called an ambulance. He lasted another two weeks in pain and distress, dying in an oxygen tent, a wasted shell of the man he had been. My mother always regretted not being able to save him that, and I think I might well do the same for my loved one if the time for that decision ever comes.

Some years before he had told me that during the war he had once had to shoot one of his own men, dreadfully wounded, hopelessly so and in great pain. His attitude was that if you were going and in pain, end it now. I'm sure he would have taken the option of assisted dying, I think he had seen (and caused) enough death not be scared of it.

Now look at the alternatives: if my mother had inadvertently given him an overdose of morphine she could, in the worst case, been prosecuted for murder. What she and the doctor knew was that in 1969 it would be very unlikely that anyone would ever take that course, it was an unspoken done thing. Like my father giving peace to one of his men...

So please don't give me a load of bullshit about coercion. It's the other way round when it comes to the sticking point.

[Abernathy]

Seen, Malcolm. Seen.

[Crabcakes]

By your logic we shouldn't have any laws against murder as people are going to murder people anyway. You talk of selfishness how is it selfish to want to protect vulnerable people from being gotten rid of because they're a considered burden on society. How is it selfish to be concerned about a bill which seems to be written on the back of an envelope.

Your analogy is nonsensical because murder isn’t a state that people freely enter into.

Currently, abusers who pressure poorly relatives into an early grave are either caught or get away with it. They are the only 2 possible outcomes. If assisted dying comes in, some abusers may be stupid enough to pressure poorly relatives into going that route. As there will be safeguards, that makes it more likely they may be discovered. Even if that’s 1 in 100,000 that’s 1 more than now and it allows the vast majority of other people who would use such a service to die with dignity.

That is on both counts better than the status quo, unless your issue is not concerns for the vulnerable but rather something else (religious, personal morals). Those are perfectly acceptable and even understandable, but also should carry no weight in a policy decision.

The only way it would be worse is if there is an explosion of people who previously wouldn’t have dreamed of pressuring a poorly relative into taking an overdose, but who simultaneously are perfectly fine wheeling them into dignitas U.K. *and* somehow these people - whose determination is already questionable given they didn’t have the nerve to try it before - aren’t caught.

Unless you have evidence that the U.K. is strewn with law-abiding psychopaths who also happen to be fabulous acting coaches who can persuade sick relations to pass psychiatric tests, I would suggest your concerns are largely baseless. Perhaps instead you should focus your concerns on the very real requests of actual people who wish to be given the right to die with dignity, rather than the concerns of hypothetical vulnerable people and their contradiction-laden abusers.

[The Weeping Angel]

I really recommend you read this article by Sarah Ditum.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/f ... 39269955-1

Where are women in the assisted dying debate? Leading the charge: a female MP, Kim Leadbeater, is the one piloting the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill through parliament. Practically, however, women’s interests have been consistently disregarded in this legislation. It is a law that has been written as though male violence and coercive control do not exist.

Supporters of assisted dying often make the argument that legalising it would “remove the need” for terminally ill individuals to “take matters into their own hands”. So let’s take a closer look at some of those individuals. In 2022, a man named Douglas Laing wrote an emotional letter to the Sunday Times, describing how he had given a fatal injection to his wife Christine in 1998 when she was terminally ill with ovarian cancer.

After Laing was contacted by police, the campaign group Dignity in Dying – which supports Leadbeater’s bill – accused law enforcement of wasting public money and causing unnecessary distress. It seemed, on the face of it, to be a perfect example of the humanitarian case: a suffering wife, a loving husband. Laing was never charged over Christine’s death.

I don’t highlight these cases to question the verdicts. But there is a pattern: a man kills a sick woman and her sickness makes the killing more understandable, despite a later incident of domestic violence (Laing) or brutality of method (Knight).

As a November 2024 report by the think tank the Other Half puts it, what are described as “mercy killings” are “very frequently the violent domestic homicide of elderly, infirm or disabled women by men”. Women are the majority of unpaid carers – 80 per cent, according to the King’s Fund. But, strangely, they appear much less likely than men to become “mercy killers”.

This discrepancy is impossible to separate from the wider belief in society that women are a kind of property owned by men. It is seen as a woman’s natural obligation to look after a man, but when a man has to look after a woman, it becomes an unreasonable imposition.

Hence the sympathy a man can draw on if he kills his wife while feeling overwhelmed by her needs. Mungall claimed to have seen an expression in his wife’s eyes “like an animal who needs to be put down and cannot say it” – a comparison that makes him the owner and her the pet.

Are we really supposed to believe that a man who feels that way about his wife is incapable of pressuring her into applying for a medically assisted suicide? In response to concerns from critics of the bill about this possibility, supporters of the bill have pointed to what they regard as its extensive safeguards. Simon Opher MP, a former GP and a member of the bill committee, has even said it is “judging doctors harshly to say that they will not spot coercion”.

Personally, I find Opher’s statement less reassuring and more indicative of a disturbingly blasé attitude to the possibility of abuse. In the limited window of a consultation, it is all too easy for a doctor to miss the signs. A YouGov survey for the charity SafeLives found that half of healthcare professionals felt unable to identify domestic violence. Sometimes, the doctor in question might even be actively untrustworthy: think of Harold Shipman, whose victims were predominantly elderly women.



But he was an unfortunate poster boy for the assisted dying cause. In 2017, he had been convicted of wounding with intent (downgraded from attempted murder) after bludgeoning his second wife, Susan, with a hammer – an attack that she said had left her “not living… just existing”. (Dignity in Dying distanced itself from Laing’s subsequent conviction.)

Then there’s the 2019 killing of 79-year-old June Knight, who was terminally ill and had Alzheimer’s. She was pushed from the first-floor fire escape of her care home by her son Robert. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a suspended sentence, with the judge describing June’s death as a “mercy killing”. But it is very hard to imagine those frightening, confusing and catastrophically painful last moments feeling “merciful” to her.

Or there’s the case of Stuart Mungall, who in 2011 smothered his wife Joan with a pillow, then took an overdose which failed to kill him. Joan had the degenerative condition Pick’s disease and only months to live, but, prosecutors said, she had never expressed a wish to die. The day before Mungall killed Joan, she was said to have told a nurse that she was “taking it all in her stride”. Like Knight, Mungall represented his actions to the court as a “mercy killing”; like Knight, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and was given a suspended sentence.

The more common scenario, though, is the patient who, through lengthy cruelty and coercion from a partner or carer, becomes genuinely convinced that she (or sometimes he) is a burden who would be better off dead. Such a person may even refuse treatment, causing a curable disease to become terminal and placing them within the purview of the bill.

Legislators should be profoundly alert to this danger. Left unaddressed, it could place the state in the grotesque position of becoming a lawful accomplice to abusers. Yet unaddressed it remains. Of the nearly 50 individuals who gave oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee, not one was an expert in male violence or coercive control. (Jane Monckton Smith, an academic who studies femicide, was called but unable to attend; the committee did not attempt to find a substitute for her.)

From the start, the Terminally Ill Adults Bill has been a rush job – in the words of one former Labour adviser, “a quick-and-dirty policy development process that wouldn’t be close to good enough for 99 per cent of the laws made on our behalf”. If it becomes law, Labour risks turning the healthcare system into an executioner for those most in need of protection.

[Crabcakes]

All of those incidents happened with no assisted dying option. If there were an assisted dying option, they might all still happen outside of that, or the abusive men may pressure their victims into going the official route and - as such - expose themselves to checks and safeguards and get caught.

Regardless this seems to be more an issue with ensuring specifics and safeguards, which is the whole purpose of the review and multiple readings of the bill. It’s certainly not a reason to abandon the whole thing.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Women are the majority of unpaid carers – 80 per cent, according to the King’s Fund. But, strangely, they appear much less likely than men to become “mercy killers”.

Women are much less likely to become any sort of killer.

[Abernathy]

Plus of course, male violence and coercive control over female partners or relatives is far from being an unknown or unrecognised phenomenon. It is a specific type of coercive control that would, under the provisions of the Leadbeater bill, be no less likely to avoid detection than any other variety of coercion in the context of the provision of choice at the end of life. What does the author want in the bill that is not already there? She doesn’t say.

I find the whole thrust of that piece rather curious. As if the incidence of violence against women were the only type of violence that the author is concerned with.

To assert that

It is a law that has been written as though male violence and coercive control do not exist.

is frankly, absurd, even if you ignore the category error that the bill is not (yet) “a law”.

[edited once prior to submission to correct phrasing]

[Andy McDandy]

I'm also fairly confident that a body discovered beneath a smashed window several storeys up, with a note left behind saying "goodbye cruel world", will get the attention of plod.

[Abernathy]

Male coercive control over women would, indeed, appear to be one of Sarah Ditum’s principal preoccupations. From her entry on Wikipedia :

Ditum's writing has covered issues including violence against women,[4][5][6] gender identity,[7] parenting,[8] British parliamentary politics[9][10] and cancel culture.[11] She also writes regular book reviews. Her book Toxic: Women, Fame and The Noughties, about misogyny in celebrity culture during the 2000s, was published by Fleet in 2023.

.


Far be it from me to suggest that “The Weeping Angel” has yet again jumped on the first bit of opinion he has found and vaguely thinks supports (or possibly just substitutes for) his own opinion, but you might be forgiven for thinking so.

[Crabcakes]

Having read around a bit, Sarah Ditum’s concern seems to be relating to the technicality that assisting suicide is to be decriminalised as part of the bill, as otherwise it can’t technically function. But as part of that, the men mentioned and others would therefore no longer be under the threat of criminal action for “helping” their wives/partners and that this could - by a back door - allow more people to bump off their relatives (specifically, men and their partners, but it would cover everyone).

While I understand that, I still don’t see this as anything other than a technical/hypothetical issue about how the existing law has to change to make the new law work, because:
1. Murder is still murder. If it looks suspicious people are not suddenly going to get a free pass and no one from the local nick popping round for a ‘chat’ if they say “oh it was just assisted suicide”.
2. It’s not going to open any floodgates because abusers who do this *already do this* while it is illegal, and don’t care. Again, do we really think there’s a significant group of borderline psychopaths who wouldn’t dream of harming or abusing someone now, but who would suddenly find themselves morally released to kill by a law that would still see them investigated and just as at risk of a murder or manslaughter charge if the evidence doesn’t back up their case?

It just doesn’t add up.

[The Weeping Angel]

Male coercive control over women would, indeed, appear to be one of Sarah Ditum’s principal preoccupations. From her entry on Wikipedia :

Ditum's writing has covered issues including violence against women,[4][5][6] gender identity,[7] parenting,[8] British parliamentary politics[9][10] and cancel culture.[11] She also writes regular book reviews. Her book Toxic: Women, Fame and The Noughties, about misogyny in celebrity culture during the 2000s, was published by Fleet in 2023.

.


Far be it from me to suggest that “The Weeping Angel” has yet again jumped on the first bit of opinion he has found and vaguely thinks supports (or possibly just substitutes for) his own opinion, but you might be forgiven for thinking so.

Or I've gone and found evidence to back up my arguement.

[The Weeping Angel]

Having read around a bit, Sarah Ditum’s concern seems to be relating to the technicality that assisting suicide is to be decriminalised as part of the bill, as otherwise it can’t technically function. But as part of that, the men mentioned and others would therefore no longer be under the threat of criminal action for “helping” their wives/partners and that this could - by a back door - allow more people to bump off their relatives (specifically, men and their partners, but it would cover everyone).

While I understand that, I still don’t see this as anything other than a technical/hypothetical issue about how the existing law has to change to make the new law work, because:
1. Murder is still murder. If it looks suspicious people are not suddenly going to get a free pass and no one from the local nick popping round for a ‘chat’ if they say “oh it was just assisted suicide”.
2. It’s not going to open any floodgates because abusers who do this *already do this* while it is illegal, and don’t care. Again, do we really think there’s a significant group of borderline psychopaths who wouldn’t dream of harming or abusing someone now, but who would suddenly find themselves morally released to kill by a law that would still see them investigated and just as at risk of a murder or manslaughter charge if the evidence doesn’t back up their case?

It just doesn’t add up.

They can do it under the cover of assisted dying. My Wife/Mother had terminal illness she wanted to die and you ignore the fact that of the cases that Ditum cites most of the men recieved suspended sentences for what they did.

[Abernathy]

Or I've gone and found evidence to back up my arguement.

It isn’t “evidence”, and it doesn’t back up your “argument”. Did you even read Crabcakes’ responses? Please try to understand.

[The Weeping Angel]

It supports my arguements and highlights a real problem with this bill. Crabcakes seems to think that's not important on the grounds that it's hypothetical except it won't be for much longer, murder is still murder except this will provide a get out of free jail card for men and ignores the fact that in the cases Ditum cites most of them ended up with suspended sentences and it won't end up open up the floodgates even if it's only a few it's still a few too many.

[Andy McDandy]

My Wife/Mother had terminal illness 

Sorry for your troubles, but this is all getting a bit Chinatown via Norfolk.

[Crabcakes]

They can do it under the cover of assisted dying. My Wife/Mother had terminal illness she wanted to die and you ignore the fact that of the cases that Ditum cites most of the men recieved suspended sentences for what they did.

This is the whole bloody argument I’ve been making. Abusers who wish to break the law already DO do it. It being illegal doesn’t deter them, just as having a safe, legal route with safeguards doesn’t automatically mean loads more people are suddenly going to try and bump off relatives. If your problem is the suspended sentences, then your problem is with investigation, policing, judicial system and sentencing and not assisted dying law. Because we don’t have assisted dying law, so it can have played no part whatsoever in the processing of the cases mentioned.

You want to shut down all possibility of a dignified death for people in unimaginable pain to attempt to prevent something entirely separate that already happens and is already illegal, and that will continue to happen and continue to be illegal if the assisted dying bill is derailed. The only people who lose out in that scenario are the people who are already needlessly suffering.