Thursday 24 September, 2009

UK
Politics
Health

By Charles Gardner

New legal guidance on assisted suicide has succeeded only in taking our country down a literal dead-end of ever-increasing darkness, though obviously the idea was to make things clearer for those contemplating this awful step.

It follows the much-publicised campaign of multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy who wanted to be sure her husband would not face prosecution if he accompanied her to ‘Dignitas’, the Swiss clinic where others have gone to end their lives.

Now the Director of Public Prosecutions has published interim guidelines which suggest protection for family members assisting suicide if they are seen to be doing it on compassionate grounds rather than for financial gain or from some other dark motive.

It will surely still be a matter of interpretation and, in theory, a potentially dangerous mission though of course we know that, in the present climate, the likely result of such action is that a legal blind eye will come into play.

So Debbie Purdy is feted as a heroine for single-handedly taking on what she refers to as “the last taboo”.

She has exercised her freedom to die – and yet millions have since the 1967 Abortion Act been denied the freedom to live through similar campaigns by liberally-minded people who managed to hoodwink the British population with hollow arguments about when a ‘foetus’ becomes a living being. The original act was trumpeted as a way of saving young women from the horrors of back-street abortions and was not meant as a ‘contraception’ for social convenience. But it was an inevitable slippery slope to what has become a silent holocaust.

But to listen to the BBC’s early evening radio news programme PM, you would think we were celebrating a great national victory akin to winning the bid to host the Olympics. For in devoting the best part of half-an-hour to the subject, I heard not a word of dissent (unless it was slipped in during the first few minutes, which I missed). Why, for example, did they not interview the Christian Legal Centre, who have issued a statement on the matter expressing “deep concern” over the guidelines?

The CLC have been campaigning for a recovery of Christian values to our society in the course of which they have highlighted a number of cases of discrimination against believers in the workplace, and in their statement barrister Andrea Williams expressed her serious misgivings.

“Our hearts of course go out to elderly and unwell people who are suffering from horrible medical conditions and to their loved ones. But we believe that all life should be protected in law and that the guidelines published today will cause great harm to individuals and society.

“We should learn from other jurisdictions where assisted suicide has been legalised. Very soon, elderly and vulnerable people surveyed by researchers report a shift in perception towards seeing themselves as a burden on their families and being under a ‘duty to die’.

“Additionally, we are concerned that the system will be open to abuse and to a creeping, ever-widening application, which has been observed in previous cases in our own legal history where laws have been injudiciously liberalised.

“We shall do all we can to raise awareness of these under-estimated factors in the run-up to the consultation. (The guidelines will be subject to consultation before becoming fully established policy). In other jurisdictions similar laws have soon been abandoned when the damage becomes evident, but only after that damage has been done. We would rather we turn back from this profoundly mistaken policy before that is allowed to happen.”

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