Meeting of the Parliament 27 May 2015
Presiding Officer,
“Legalising assisted suicide is a slippery slope toward widespread killing of the sick”.
Those are not my words, nor are they the words of any anti-euthanasia group or religious leader. They are the words of Professor Theo Boer, an academic in the field of ethics who himself had previously argued that good euthanasia law would produce relatively low numbers of deaths.
Professor Boer is based at Utrecht University and has been a member of a review committee charged with monitoring assisted suicide deaths in Holland. He is a one-time advocate of assisted suicide who, based on the evidence that he now has available to him, believes that the very existence of a euthanasia law turns assisted suicide from a last resort into a normal procedure.
Assisted suicide is now becoming so prevalent in the Netherlands, according to Professor Boer, that it is, as he says,
“on the way to becoming a default mode of dying for cancer patients”.
Having monitored the situation in Holland for the past 12 years, Professor Boer now admits that he was wrong to have believed that regulated assisted suicide would work. We should not dismiss that conclusion today. Instead we should, as others have done this afternoon, advocate greater awareness of the so-far-untapped potential of good palliative care. Too many terminally ill people are not receiving the care that they need at the end of life, and that can have a detrimental impact on the quality of life that they have in their last years and months. Action needs to be taken on that situation, but the bill is not that action.
Proponents of assisted suicide often refer to autonomy as if it was a generally accepted principle on which to base the bill. In fact, the law exists to protect us all, and it often curtails individual autonomy in order to safeguard others.
There is undoubtedly still much work to be done to ensure that people retain as much control as possible as they approach the end of their life and that they receive the best possible care. That is why I believe that the focus on end-of-life issues must be on addressing unmet need and ensuring that people do not miss out on the palliative care that they should get.
Legalising assisted suicide is a retrograde and negative step that does not promote good care or challenge the lack of the medical assistance that is required to die with dignity. What will address that is a good palliative care approach. Done properly, that is active, holistic care of people with advanced progressive illness that is delivered in a wide range of settings, including hospices, using both specialist palliative care and more generalist care.
Many people who are faced with a terminal illness fear the future, and that is understandable when they are not certain to access such palliative care. Our task, therefore, should not be to cultivate any fear that may exist but to promote a culture in which people with terminal illnesses know that, whatever their future, they will benefit from having access to palliative care and end-of-life care.
I began by quoting Professor Boer from Holland and I will also finish with his words. In 2007, he concurred with the views that are expressed by supporters of the bill. He wrote that
“there doesn’t need to be a slippery slope when it comes to euthanasia. A good euthanasia law, in combination with the euthanasia review procedure, provides the warrants for a stable and relatively low number of”
deaths from
“euthanasia.”
Boer noted that, at that time, most of his colleagues drew the same conclusion. Now he says:
“But we were wrong - terribly wrong, in fact ... I used to be a supporter of the Dutch law. But now, with twelve years of experience, I take a very different view ... don’t go there. Once the genie is out of the bottle, it is not likely to ever go back in again.”
I urge Parliament today to heed the words of Professor Boer: “don’t go there.”
15:58