Assisted dying: the Kindest thing that Life can offer
Herein lies a great paradox, and possibly this current matter contains one of the greatest paradoxes of all ‘UK’ modern time. The Terminally ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – to repeat the full title, with the addition of ill written like that because Ill is actually a capital ‘i’ with two lower case ‘l’s’ which look like purely three capital ‘i’s’ which doesn’t mean a lot. Reversing upper and lower case to iLL equally works, but whether iLL or ill, the fact is the same, The Terminally ill/iLL Adults (End of Life) Bill is about one thing only, not general illness or serious illness, it is about terminal illness and to make it doubly clear End of Life has been included in the title. A terminus is the end of the line. In Eastbourne, East Sussex, Terminus Road outside the rail station is just that, the end of the train line and the beginning of the walk to the seafront. There are many terminus rail stations where the train will not go forward because it is the end of the line. Stranraer is another, as is North Berwick, and as is Tweedbank in the recent history of the resumed Borders Railway.
Terminal is definite, factual, measurable, an overarching situation within which all the normal daily life events are relegated to that vastness of human birth and death of the physical life, and which we call a span. A span does end otherwise it would not be a span, it would just go on and on and be actually nothing.
Certainly there are those few who are expected to pass shortly yet continue on months, even a year, or occasionally (very occasionally) even longer. In the scheme of things, which under this Bill is life and passing/physical death, terminal means terminal, the buffer is in sight and everyone knows it, primarily the person themselves.
As Leader of the Opposition (and how different things look when you are in opposition and free to promise anything, challenge anything, opinionate on anything) Sir Kier Starmer promised Dame Esther Rantzen, herself terminally ill in the biologically factual sense of the word, that if his party gained power they would definitely give time to this issue. Esther Rantzen was talking biologically. Sir Kier Starmer was talking politically and after the sweeping Labour victory Sir Kier has not followed through on that. Probably the statement was made in the giddy whirl of celebrity, not realising that Dame Esther was talking biologically, real life, pragmatically.
It has been, paradoxically, the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Private Member’s Bill to bring the subject into the public legislative realm. and paradoxically again, Lord Falconer’s, a Labour peer, clear thinking and drafting in 2014 bringing this base matter into Parliament. Base as in basic, not base as in gross, which opponents view it, for the two-pronged religious opponents – the very religious Christians and now other religions which now have a power presence in the ‘UK’ but it is the Christians who turn out in front of Parliament to oppose the Bill and whose hatred of the supporters is scarily near wanting to do away with them (us) with no terminal illness present, and the politically religious who believe that ‘the State’ is heaven on Earth and is the one to give or take away, and any rejection of ‘the State’ is akin to aligning yourself with the political devil domain.
And thinking about it, there has now appeared a third religious-type opponent, of the individuals who do not have full mobility and therefore need to use a chair on wheels to get around, and which must be a big trial every single day, but who have appeared as an equal right opponent to this Bill. Pam Duncan-Glancy in the earlier part of 2025 when Assisted Dying appeared in Holyrood and Tanni Grey-Thompson as a current member of the House of Lords where this Terminally iLL Adults (End of Life) Bill is currently being debated – having been passed through Parliament and to repeat, having been passed through Parliament – and the very personal and very public on radio and TV and social media that is said this Bill is trying to kill us does factually show more a narcissistic personality issue than being able to read the title of a Bill from which it is too obvious to even debate that n/a to them. And within the very personal opponents are those who say their loved one did survive a lot longer than expected, and it led to that closeness which inevitable death brings and which is a good memory for those, but only because the person could talk, was not begging to die, was not asking why their loved ones were not doing the kindest thing possible of ending the fear and horror of a very bad death. But because politics is now all about the individual, even a new ‘Cult of the Individual’, and the individual voice and experience rather than the function of governance, even in the inner workings of government under the ‘UK’ and in the devolved chaos left by Tony Blair, in a debate as baseline as bad and traumatic endings for a terminally ill person and all around them, the illogicality of someone who is not terminally ill being able to speak in a debate as if it is about them, well, such is the state of governance in the ‘UK’.
Biology being biology, very many animal ‘owners’ or co-workers with animals however we define the various human-animal pairings can see when a bad ending is approaching and when that measurable point has appeared – like not able to eat or drink, being in obvious pain and distress, losing a lot of weight or bodily distortion of the part where the terminal illness is taking over – take the no-option decision out of care for the animal to either visit the vet or have the vet come to the animal especially for big farm animals, or the farmers of which there are still a few just have to act according to natural principles, which is to end mindless suffering. It is not legal in the ‘UK’ for a human to go to a vet, and this writer never understands this. Biology is biology and especially with End of Life Terminal iLLness, the principles are the same.
The opponents – all three, the religious zealots, the State zealots, and the personal zealots who cannot read the title to know it would not apply to them unless they had a terminal illness – who have introduced in the HoL, House of Lords, and Ladies now, the very very long list of objections to this Bill which has already been passed through the Commons say that the Bill is not clear, all the grey areas will lead to abuse and coercion, and their list goes on and on. In logical thinking it is the opposite, and the current situation is the chaotic one.
The title is as clear as could be, and all alongside this is the option for the person approaching the very bad end to ‘go to Dignitas’. The word Dignitas sounds very like Dignity, which of course is what it is. Dame Esther says she may consider that herself. It all stands as yet another avoidance in the ‘UK’ of the void – in food, in energy supplies, in education systems, in the apparently free NHS, in soft global power, in the ships which leave our coastline every night laden with tons and tons of recycling to be processed by some quiet arrangement with a sizable payment involved, and the option safely just outside the ‘UK’ of Dignitas where every opponent of this Bill in the Commons and the Lords/Ladies must know it exists. All the countries and USA states who have integrated Assisted Dying into their daily life governance systems, and now the Isle of Mann in 2023 Parliament now in law in 2025 and awaiting Royal Assent, are those who see a human as biology over sociology and politics, and whose government structures align with logical processes.
Would the House of Lords opponents argue that those going for a Dignified passing at Dignitas are doing something illegal, because they are British citizens therefore should be bound by laws of Parliament? Their long list of ‘points needing clarification’ could easily be reversed by looking at facts, such as the Isle of Mann, our very near neighbours around the North Sea who take a very baseline approach to humans on the physical Earth, and also to those MPs who started off opposing the Bill from back in 2014 but who then saw physical reality in someone close to them, and that horrible, shocking, deeply inhuman and torturous last few weeks or months changed their mind, and the reality of this Bill became clear, and they this time voted for it.
Yes, the process of this Bill, now passed through the Commons but being determedly held up by the Lords/Ladies does show almighty collision of all things biological, health systems, politics, religion and the new ‘Cult of the Individual’. If Dame Esther does decide to go for that uncomplicated, inevitable and clear ending out of ‘UK’ jurisdiction then maybe this would be the year of a watershed of common sense could reappear in ‘UK’ politics and a return to the real facts of life, and death, which are biology on a physical planet where everything has a span, and within which we are just very little cogs in a very big cycle.
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