MPs have just voted against legalising assisted dying. This is the second attempt, and it failed. Somehow, once again, this stupid country has decided that the answer to people facing the final decision of their lives is to tell them to get fucked because they don’t get a choice. We are a pathetic nation, incapable of doing anything that might actually benefit or help someone.
Listening to some of the arguments on BBC News or reading them online makes me struggle to understand what people think was being proposed. Do all the morons outside Parliament think that we were going to put elderly people onto a conveyor belt leading into a meat grinder? Did they really think the NHS would send disabled or terminally ill people to the glue factory? I don’t recall seeing any mention of being able to just walk up to a doctor and ask to be shot in the head. All I saw was that we’re at the beginning of changing the culture around euthanasia in the UK by allowing those with six months or fewer less to live the option to request medical assistance to end their lives, subject to a multitude of safeguards.
In a just world, anyone who voted against this bill should be given six months of locked-in syndrome, with nobody around them to care for them, and then after their time they get asked again. If they choose to still deny people the right to choose for a dignified death then they should stay locked-in until they change their minds. It’s just so easy to say life is precious when you haven’t lost control of your body, or there’s always hope if you haven’t been given mere months to live, or even better care is the answer when you haven’t experienced life as a person who doesn’t want to end their lives in pain and agony, but most importantly, it’s so easy to tell other people how to live their lives when you aren’t the person living it. And you know what, if you have experienced all of the above and still believe that people shouldn’t have the right to choose their own end, then you still don’t have the right to deny them that choice.
This isn’t a full essay, but I can’t avoid the argument that vulnerable people can be taken advantage of. They might be coerced into it, so we need to prevent that and any other kind of pressure that comes from outside parties. Manipulation is a tricky one, but this any many more arguments are simply arguments for strong safeguards, not that nobody should have a choice. Likewise for poverty, or lack of care. Death shouldn’t be the only option because someone feels like a financial burden, but again these are just restrictions added on to people who are suffering. We all want better healthcare and social care, and certainly better support for those at the end of their lives, but it doesn’t have to take away from people’s right to choose their own way out.
The question is not about the positives vs negatives of death, suicide, assisted dying, or anything of that nature. The question is actually about the state forcing someone to die in a manner that they don’t want; by not allowing the bill to pass, the state has said we must all die in whatever way the universe chooses for us, and that short of jumping off a bridge or starving ourselves to death first, we must suffer it until the very end.
I support assisted dying because I am not a selfish ignorant cunt. The real reason society is uncomfortable with assisted dying is because it gives people an escape from a world that they no longer want to be part of, which implies life is worse than death. This goes against nature and our will to survive; we are expected to work forever, pay our taxes and our bills, to consume endless products. We can’t do this if we break free from the system, and if that option is always there, then it would be too disruptive. Perhaps moreso than any other argument against the bill, there is a far worse fear that once people are given the option to leave in a painless and easy way, they might look at the society we’ve built and decide they’ve had enough of it.