Should MP’s legalise assisted dying in the UK?

MP’s debated on Monday April 29th whether assisted dying should be legalised in the UK.

Transcript

00:00 And we've been working very closely with Dame Esther Ransom.

00:04 And Esther, like many, many other people who have been given a terminal diagnosis, wants

00:10 to control how she is going to die.

00:13 She's not sure she wants an assisted death, but she definitely wants the choice.

00:18 She's very worried about her family and what would happen to them, because assisting or

00:23 encouraging a death in that way is still technically a crime, a serious crime, which she could

00:31 be prosecuted and put into prison for 14 years.

00:35 And people have been prosecuted under similar laws.

00:39 So there have been cases of somebody called Mavis Eccleston, for example, who assisted

00:46 her husband to die of terminal bowel cancer back in 2018.

00:51 And she was prosecuted for murder and manslaughter.

00:55 In opposition to the legalisation of the legislation, Dr Gordon MacDonald, speaking on behalf of

01:00 Care Not Killing, an organisation which is self-proclaimed to promote care and oppose

01:05 euthanasia, told ITV News, quote, "every time politicians have rejected it because

01:10 they've thought about the issue and they realise it's just not safe."

01:14 I spoke to a family of a 102-year-old World War II veteran who starved himself to death

01:22 for eight weeks because he wanted to die on his terms and his condition caused him unbearable

01:28 suffering.

01:29 That's barbaric.

01:30 That shouldn't be, that shouldn't happen in a compassionate society.

01:34 And the UK is a compassionate country.

01:36 There's clearly a mismatch here between the sort of scrutiny and oversight that is afforded

01:41 at the moment around people taking the law into their own hands and what it would be

01:46 under a proper safeguarded regulated system.

01:50 Because what happens is when you ban assisted dying, you don't stop assisted dying, you

01:54 just stop safe assisted dying.

01:56 So you drive it underground.

01:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]