SO, The Assisted Dying Bill has at last reach the floor of our Scottish Parliament at Holyrood. My own involvement began at my first Cross-Party Group meeting in March 2019. The group had already been meeting for several months in order to make the case for new legislation.
In that meeting, Professor Harry Quillan of Community Pharmacy Scotland presented a detailed case outlining the practical, financial and ethical problems and issues for doctors, pharmacists and patients. His carefully researched proposals and findings were stunning in their detailed consideration.
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In the following months I heard experts from around the world submit their experiences and findings. I learned several things. The politicians present in the room were from across the political spectrum. but they presented as a serious group of people, collectively intent on establishing a case for change in the current legislation. To those of us who are so used to being presented with a more combative image, this was something of a revelation – a hearteningly positive one.
Prof Quillan’s presentation has stayed with me ever since. It set the tone of serious professional consideration of aspects of the debate. The subsequent speakers continued to underlined that initial voice. Given the anxieties and doubts expressed by those who oppose the bill, I could only wish that they had been present in that one meeting to gauge the sober, serious intent of the new legislation.
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As the debate goes forward, the words we use, the terminology some of our politicians can use and the language our media constantly uses requires equal care, and seriousness. In one of the meetings, an MSP new to the debate was admonished by the chairperson for use of the phrase “assisted suicide”. The chair suggested such a phrase might be considered inappropriate and emotionally loaded with a bias that was not helpful to the clarity the discussion was striving towards.
The point was underlined in a later meeting by Dr D Obree of Edinburgh University, who suggested that “the terminology of accelerated dying is a mess”. In a more extreme example, it was reported that MSPs from across the political spectrum had joined together to oppose the proposed bill, stating: “society should be preventing suicide, not assisting it. Have we really become a society that says the best answer we can provide to those suffering in end of life situations is to help them kill themselves? Is that really all we can offer? … That to us, is the measure of a desperately cold soulless society. We think that in Scotland today we are better than that.”
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Over the past two years, time and again I have heard the phrase “slippery slope”. I attended a Zoom conference in February 2023 chaired by journalist Polly Toynbee for the Assisted Dying Coalition. Time and again the representatives from around the UK spoke of the resistance of MPs to making a decision which would in effect respond to polling that suggested that 82% of the population, spread across age, incomes and political opinion, supported assisted dying.
The reticence of our political representatives seems to cohere around the fear of “the slippery slope”. In lobbying my MSPs on behalf of the current bill (PR allowed me to legitimately meet with five), my last meeting was with an MSP at the other end of the political spectrum from myself. We had a good meeting. As a list MSP he does much work in his own part of Scotland and is particularly committed to the needs of the disabled. We had a serious discussion and a joyous parting. He explained very clearly his doubts about a change in the law, was clear about his own strong, moral and ethical beliefs but equally clear that as representative, he was obliged to set them aside and make a judgement for the public greater good. But there was that irrevocable crossing of a line that could not be gone back on. Ah! The slippery slope?
I put it to him that the very reason he was sitting before me was that someone, sometime had crossed a line and let the ordinary person have the vote. Universal suffrage, votes for women, gay rights, disabled rights, all were viewed in their time as descents into some manner of chaos. He smiled and summarised: “One person’s ascent to civilisation is another person’s slide into barbarity!” Please discuss!
Lewis Waugh
Edinburgh
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