Written by Katie Syfrett, M.S.

Members of the United Kingdom’s parliament recently voted in favor of the “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill,” which is now undergoing amendments before it can be officially passed as law. This bill is intended for patients with less than six months to live and who “have the mental capacity to make the choice and be deemed to have expressed a clear, settled and informed wish, free from coercion or pressure.” There are several “safeguards” written into the bill, such as requiring physicians to stay with the patient until they have self-administered the medication and died, and ensuring jail time will be given to anyone found guilty of pressuring or using dishonesty to get a patient to say they agree with assisted suicide.[1]

Assisted suicide and euthanasia are often supported based on misconstrued beliefs that assisted suicide is compassionate and humane because it ends the suffering that is caused by intractable pain at the end of life. However, evidence has shown that the reasons that patients actually request assisted suicide are not often related to pain, but are due to psychosocial distress arising from fear. These fears include fear of being a burden, losing control of their lives/not being able to enjoy activities they used to enjoy, or feeling alone and isolated.[2] It isn’t more “humane and compassionate” to speed up the natural dying process through PAS or euthanasia. Human beings are not dogs that need to “humanely” be put out of their misery as quickly as possible.

Further, legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia is a slippery slope to “killing becoming an alternative to medical care,” and the elderly may begin to feel that they have a duty to die because they have become burdens. The elderly may also be subjects of coercion through those who seek to benefit from their deaths if assisted suicide is legalized.[3] 

The permittance of PAS and euthanasia has led to coercion of patients, which is the opposite of compassionate care. Can patients actually make free and informed decisions when they feel like they are no longer worthy of living, that they are burdening their loved ones financially and emotionally, and that they are no longer productive members of society?[4] This coercion also takes place by greedy insurance companies denying coverage and instead pushing for PAS/euthanasia as a benefit allowing them to save money by not providing ongoing treatment.[5]

Once PAS/euthanasia is legalized, it is a slippery slope to coercion, allowing it for any reason from mental illness to homelessness, parents wanting to end the lives of their suffering children, and even those who simply feel that their lives are not worth living because they have disabilities.[6] There is also the argument that the legalization of assisted dying allows for more, and “fresher,” organ donations.[7]

Who gets to decide who is worthy or unworthy of having their lives ended, especially when people in states considered “low quality of life” are not able to ask for PAS/euthanasia themselves? There is also the potential that this disregard for life that isn’t “perfect” leads to mandated euthanasia, since, of course, if vaccines can be mandated for the “good of society,”[8] then why not euthanasia in order to save money by ridding society of those draining financial resources?

Physicians have a duty to not abandon their patients, act with integrity, and establish patient trust.[9] When physicians are asked to kill patients, the call of the physician, to provide compassionate care to the wounded, vulnerable, alienated, and sick, is distorted and not only violates personal and professional integrity of the physician but leads to moral confusion about what is good when it comes to treating the human person. If physicians are allowed to kill their patients as opposed to upholding their duties to cure and care, then trust between patient and physician is no longer established, as what’s to stop a physician from killing a patient against their will if the physician decides that it’s more compassionate to end the patient’s life?

While there are “safeguards” put in place to make sure patients are more efficiently dying and that they are protected from coercion, any bill requiring these safeguards to be put in place should raise red flags. There is a lot of potential for liability involved in the assisted death process because death is the ultimate harm one can cause to another, regardless of whether the patient “chooses” it.

Since sufficient pain medication can indeed be provided, what is actually needed for those who are terminally ill are physicians who show patients they are not burdens by not giving up on them, a relationship of trust between patient-physician, and a society that, instead of being apathetic towards those who are suffering, supports them and ensures them that they are not alone, along with a healthcare system that doesn’t present assisted dying as the least expensive alternative.

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[1] Roberts, Michelle. 2024. “Assisted Dying Bill: What Is in the Proposed Law?” BBC, November 12, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2l7m6r55do.

[2] Sulmasy, Daniel P., John M. Travaline, Louise A. Mitchell, and E. Wesley Ely. 2016. “Non-Faith-Based  Arguments against Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia.” The Linacre Quarterly 83 (3): 246–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/00243639.2016.1201375.

[3] Leies, J. A. (2010). Handbook on critical life issues. National Catholic Bioethics Center.

[4] Wijngaarden, Els van, Carlo Leget, and Anne Goossensen. 2015. “Ready to Give up on Life: The Lived Experience of Elderly People Who Feel Life Is Completed and No Longer Worth Living.” Social Science & Medicine 138 (August): 257–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.05.015.

[5] Breckenridge, Katie. 2023. “Pre-Natural Death by Katie Breckenridge – Salvo Magazine.” Salvomag.com. 2023. https://salvomag.com/post/pre-natural-death.

[6] Breckenridge, Katie. 2020. “A Life-Affirming Life by Katie Breckenridge – Salvo Magazine.” Salvomag.com. 2020. https://salvomag.com/article/salvo70/a-life-affirming-life.

[7] Strathclyde, University of, and Glasgow. n.d. “Study Counts the Cost of Denying Assisted Dying.” Medicalxpress.com. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-03-denying-dying.html.

[8] Myers, Melissa, Leonard Dunikoski, Richard Brantner, Debbie Fletcher, Eugene E. Saltzberg, Alfredo E. Urdaneta, Benjamin Wedro, and Al O. Giwa. 2022. “An Ethical Analysis of the Arguments Both for and against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates for Healthcare Workers.” The Journal of Emergency Medicine 64 (2). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jemermed.2022.11.005.

‌[9] Quill, Timothy E. 1995. “Nonabandonment: A Central Obligation for Physicians.” Annals of Internal Medicine 122 (5): 368. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-122-5-199503010-00008.

This article was originally published by the Society of St. Sebastian.