Assisted Suicide: The law should not be changed

This time the discussion about assisted suicide isn’t as straightforward as usual. The issue, whose proponents have made it rather finicky, is back in Parliament being debated today. Early this year Richard Ottaway MP called on the Back Bench Business committee to give time to a debate on the Director of Public Prosecutions Policy for prosecutors on cases of encouraging or assisting suicide. The debate is over whether Parliament welcomes the DPP's guidance. It is also on whether it likes it so much that it should call on Government to enshrine the guidance into law.

Ottaway’s reason for having the debate is that the parties of unbridled individualism would like to portray the issue as compromising the sovereignty of parliament by an activist judiciary.
That is nonsense. It is a cunning move by those that want to legalise assisted suicide to forward their agenda. The language of parliamentary sovereignty could spike the vanity of some parliamentarians, but it also leaves those who oppose assisted suicide in the position of needing to show a merciful face while holding the line at how the law is currently worded. The law at the best of times is a blunt instrument, whose words necessarily need to be interpreted by the judiciary, taking into consideration case law and the specific circumstances of each case, to come to an approximation of justice.

The document written by the DPP was published in February 2010, and was produced because a judge ruled that for the sake of transparency and accountability it was right that the DPP explain publically what goes into considering individual cases of assisted suicide. It outlines due process, takes into consideration what constitute a public interest to bring a prosecution. For example the strict letter of the law means that a partner travelling to Switzerland, to a Dignitas clinic, with somebody who is there assisted in committing suicide would be in breach of the law and liable to be prosecuted on their return to Britain. But that does not mean the DPP will seek to prosecute, if he is satisfied that the conditions outlined in his guidance where either not breached or as is the case with some of his conditions that they where met. The hefty weight of the matter raises questions which cannot be answered in the abstract through brut law, but need to be placed in the hands of the judiciary who hopefully, by the Wisdom of Solomon, will make the right decision.

Those that would like to see the law abolished are using the tactics of the Pharisees, trying to find loopholes through which they can justify their hope for manufactured life endings. By placing the DPP’s guidance on a statutory footing, the law would be eroded because the human element of that hefty decision would be taken out of the equation. The law would be changed, taking the burden of knowing that you might be prosecuted if you behave in an unlawful way. It would be replaced with procedural security in knowing that if you make the right noises you are free to help kill another. It is the weight of guilt, coupled with the force of a punishment, tied with the possibility of mercy shown by the DPP which makes the law as it currently stands humane, rather than a technocratic machine.

As Blackadder had it, “needs must when the devil vomits into your kettle” and I am sure parliamentarians who feel profound discomfort at the possibility of vulnerable people being euthanatised against their wish will stand up and uphold the constitution. They will welcome the DPP’s guidance, yet stand against efforts to erode the weight of the law since it does what it should by protecting life.