[Right_to_die] New assisted suicide ruling should bring about re-thinking says London newspaper

[World right-to-die news list (nonprofit)]

The Guardian in London made this editorial comment (7.30.09) about this 
week's decision in the House of Lords on assisted suicide (Until now, 
the House of Lords has historically been Britain's supreme court of law; 
but from today this is changed so that Britain has it own Supreme Court 
separate from the political arena of Parliament.)

Guardian Editorial Comment

Assisted suicide: Legal aid

     The appellate committee of the House of Lords yesterday ended its 
own life with a final ruling which will affect the way others end 
theirs. The law lords, sitting as such for the last time before the new 
supreme court comes into being, heeded the pleas of the multiple 
sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy, who has been seeking assurance that 
were her husband to travel with her to a Swiss clinic to end her own 
life, he would not face prosecution.

The bold judgment requires the director of public prosecutions to spell 
out when he will and will not prosecute in cases involving the sort of 
assisted suicide which Ms Purdy envisages for herself. Some of the 
implications are disturbing, and there are important concerns about 
exactly how the ruling will work. On the principle, though, the law 
lords got it emphatically right.

Some objections to euthanasia amount to illiberal moralising, but some 
are profound. The sanctity of life is for the most part a civilising 
ideal, and one cherished by those medics who are deeply reluctant to get 
involved in causing death instead of saving life. Their warnings that 
terminal illnesses can be misdiagnosed deserves a respectful hearing, as 
do claims that relatives worn down by caring may apply indecent 
pressure, whether consciously or otherwise. Set against all this is the 
grim, painful and slow reality of so many deaths, a reality obscured by 
soft talk about "allowing nature to take its course".

It is telling that the case against euthanasia is often pitched in terms 
of abstract principles, whereas the most persuasive arguments for reform 
start with a first-hand account of just what it is like to watch a real 
person suffer as they fade. Sometimes principles are held so dearly that 
no amount of experience can dislodge them, but opponents of reform 
should at least be able to see the holes in the logic of the status quo, 
which remain even after yesterday's ruling.

Until 1961 ending one's own life was illegal, although threatening 
failed suicides with jail is an absurdity to which virtually no one 
would want to return. Yet while most people are quite free to kill 
themselves under the law, the same is not true of the unlucky minority 
who are too incapacitated to do so alone. Suicide is the only lawful act 
that it is illegal to conspire in, so those who need assistance in order 
to die – often the very same people who have the strongest reason for 
wanting to do so – face effective discrimination. When they demand the 
right to die, they are demanding no more than a right that everyone else 
already has.

While bold, yesterday's ruling is only a small step in starting to put 
that right. It means that those with the capacity – financial and 
physical – to travel to Switzerland should soon be able to do so 
accompanied by their loved ones without fear of criminalising them. 
Surely no one can think it better for them to travel out there alone, as 
is already legal. Nothing, however, will change for those who are too 
frail or too poor to make the same journey. The only answer for them is 
fuller-blooded reform to make a reality of the right to die comfortably 
within the UK itself. That can only be a job for parliament, as opposed 
to the judges.

Until parliament turns to the task, people mentally quite capable of 
making a choice will be unable to exercise it. Letting matters drift 
also carries more particular risks. Whatever threats the law made, 
Purdy-type cases were almost never prosecuted. Now that the DPP is 
obliged to spell out exactly when the public interest requires a 
prosecution, he could perversely force himself to take action more 
often. Even if not, the upshot is that he – rather than parliament – 
will effectively be making the law.

The law lords were right to conclude that the uncertain threat hanging 
over families in the most desperate of circumstances is an unacceptable 
breach of the right to a private life. But now parliament, not the DPP, 
must tackle the central question: when is it acceptable to assist 
someone to die?