Margo MacDonald's Bill 'would encourage suicide tourism to Scotland'

In today's edition of the times my attention was immediately drawn to this title. I have already read about the upcoming trend concerning 'Suicide travel' and although it might seem a rather macaber trend, I must say I can understand perfectly why this trend is arising.

The article tells us about politician Margo MacDonald, who's Assisted Suicide Bill is morally ambiguous and would encourage suicide tourism to Schotland if it was to become a law. The proposed law also risks changing society’s views of the disabled.
Edward Turner, of Dignity in Dying, said that Mr Turner, who travelled to the Swiss clinic Dignitas with his dying mother four years ago to allow her to end her life, said that Ms MacDonald’s inclusion of people who had been physically incapacitated raised troubling questions about the value of the lives of the disabled. Dignity in Dying recommends that only those who are terminally ill and have six months or less to live should qualify for the right to an assisted death.

“When you talk about that [disabled people], it’s morally ambiguous,” he said. “I’m not saying it is immoral, I am not saying it is right or wrong, but people have a range of views. There is the issue about the protection of disabled people’s lives. “Some disabled people are very threatened by the idea that able-bodied society as a whole, which has no experience of disability and no experience of the discrimination which disabled people face, would suddenly say, “Ah, that’s the answer to disability — give people the option of assisted death’.”

Mr Turner said he and Ms MacDonald had spoken about their differences and “agreed to disagree”, but he suggested that the inclusion of disabled people would be one of the first parts of the End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill to fall. “I suspect the Bill will be edited at the committee stage and that may be one of the topics at the top of the list,” he said.

Although the Bill requires that those who apply for a medically assisted death must have been registered with a Scottish GP for at least 18 months, Mr Turner said people with the “money, wherewithal, nous and forward planning” would find a way to bend the rules. “If they get diagnosed with something unpleasant, as a little kind of insurance policy they’d try and register with a Scottish GP, and you might even find people moving there.”

Despite his concerns over the Bill, Mr Turner praised the MSP for raising the debate. “The thing about Margo is she’s such an honest politician, she is not frightened to be controversial and I respect that,” he said.

Ms MacDonald defended her proposals to offer a medically assisted death to those who have been permanently physically incapacitated.

She said she had been inspired by Dan James, the 23-year-old quadriplegic rugby player who ended his life at Dignitas, and Lynn Gilderdale, the 33-year-old ME sufferer whose mother helped her to take her own life. “I am giving them the right to ask for assistance if their life is intolerable. They’ve got autonomy and they have the right to be heard,” she said.

Ms MacDonald, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease and has already said she would like to be able to bring about her own death if her condition deteriorates, launched the Bill last month. It proposes that anyone over the age of 16 should be able to request medical help in dying if they have been diagnosed as terminally ill or physically incapacitated and find life intolerable.

Mr Turner’s mother, Anne, a GP who suffered from progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare and debilitating brain disease, ended her life in Switzerland in 2006. He also saw his father and an uncle die of degenerative diseases. “Four years later, I am more haunted by my father’s death than my mother’s,” he said. “For the last few months of his life he was little more than a breathing corpse.”

While he did not wish his mother to end her life, he said that he and his siblings did not wish her to go through the experience on her own. He argued that she would have been able to live longer if she had been able to access an assisted death at home in Britain. “My mother recognised that travelling would be more and more difficult. She saw the window closing,” he said.

According to Dignitas, only those people who are terminally ill and have six months or less to live should qualify for the right to an assisted death. I couldn't agree more on the fact that these people deserve to be assisted in death. If I were to get very ill I would even want to have the right to die before the proces of degeneration starts. Don't we all want to be remembered as the people we were when we were healthy?

Ms MacDonald proposes in her Bill that also people who were permanently physically incapacitated should have the right to an assisted death if they should decide that their lives have become intolerable. "They’ve got autonomy and they have the right to be heard", said Margo. I agree entirely with her point of view here. I even dare to go as far as to say I feel nobody should have to drag him/herself through a life of depression and continuous suffering! Refusing people the right to decide over their own lives, thát's what's cruel and inhuman!

Just recently I lost an aunt who had been in a coma for about 6 years. Since nobody knew what she would've wished for -and the fact that euthanasia is still illegal I suppose- the family decided to just wait. That's all you can really do in the end, just wait. My aunt could open her eyes and look around. So I have reason to believe she was conscious, although she couldn't do or say anything. Can you just try and imagine for a moment what you would feel like if you could hear and see everything around you but you weren't able to respond to anything? I hope with all my heart she was never really conscious. The doctors didn't know either, but in all honesty, what dó they really know? They have no idea how the human brain works when it comes down to it. Sure, a doctor can 'save your life', but what so often happens is they kind'of trap your soul in your expired body, okay, so you didn't die, you're just in a coma, taking a nap. If euthanasia is immoral because you're 'playing God', than so is saving someones life or reanimating someone.
So with all do respect, but just maybe we shouldn't be so hypocritical about who does have 'the right' to an assisted suicide and who doesn't.