Politics
Assisted dying bill ‘about autonomy and choice’, MP says
Self-administering drugs to end your own life legally is more compassionate than someone else doing it, the MP proposing assisted dying legislation has said.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was published on Monday and revealed the medicine that will end a patient’s life will need to be self-administered, with doctors not allowed to do so.
It also stipulates people must be terminally ill and expected to die within six months.
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Kim Leadbeater, the MP who has introduced the bill, told Sky News: “By the time the patient gets to that point, they’ve gone through a huge process of thinking about whether this is what they want to do.
“And also, they can change their mind at that point if they want to.
“It’s [self-administering] not a brutal process. It’s actually a compassionate process with loved ones around you.
“And that’s the kind of death people want rather than, as I’ve heard many stories of sometimes days of people talking to death, vomiting and horrible, horrible circumstances and all that.”
She added the bill “is about autonomy and it’s about choice so it has to be the decision of the individual, and it has to be the act of the individual”.
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater has proposed the bill
Ms Leadbeater said the fact terminally ill patients will have to make the choice themselves and administer the drugs themselves “creates that extra level of safeguards and protections”.
MPs will be given a “free vote” on the bill at the end of November so they can vote however they like instead of being forced to follow party lines.
Many MPs have said they are undecided and it is expected there will be a high number of MPs abstaining, however, there are many who have also come out for and against it.
For a person to end their life, the bill states two independent doctors must confirm a patient is eligible for assisted dying and a High Court judge would have to give approval.
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Ms Leadbeater said this is part of a series of layers of safeguards and protections “which I hope reassures people that we’re solving the problem that we need to solve, because at the moment there are no safeguards”.
The MP held a briefing on the bill on Tuesday morning, where terminal cancer patient Nathaniel Dye, whose fiancee and mother died of cancer, told how he supports the bill.
Explainer: What does the assisted dying bill propose?
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“I see this bill as a chance,” he said.
“Whilst I’m hoping for the best – I might have brain surgery, so I’m hoping to survive that… I mean, no one’s pretty giving that to me, but I still hope.
“However, I’m hoping for the best, but I’m preparing for the worst, and I see this bill as a chance for people like me to maybe, just maybe, not necessarily need to, but maybe avoid that worst case scenario of an horrific death.”
“There will be no chance that I will get better, that I will see anything but pain and suffering. That situation is possible even with the best palliative care.
“I’ve heard stories and I could not imagine that. So what I see in this veil is a chance for people in my situation to.
“So to be able to commit one last act of kindness to their family, I guess to myself as well, to say, can we avoid this horrific death? Can we make my end be as kind and compassionate as possible?”