Baroness Nuala O’Loan has warned that proposals to legalise assisted suicide risk redefining “care and compassion” as the facilitation of death, arguing instead that true compassion lies in providing proper care and support at the end of life.
Speaking amid ongoing debates in Westminster, Scotland and the Isle of Man, the crossbench peer said the proposed legislation would allow a person diagnosed with a terminal illness and given a prognosis of six months to live to “choose to die and can ask that the state assist them to do so”.
She warned that prognoses are often unreliable, noting that “some 40% of diagnoses are accurate” and that a survey of 98,000 prognoses found “only 32% are accurate”.
Supporters of assisted suicide, she said, frame the issue primarily as one of autonomy. “People who want assisted suicide call for autonomy – saying that a person should be able to decide when and where their life ends, and that the state must help them to do so.”
However, Baroness O’Loan cautioned that autonomy can be undermined by vulnerability. People may feel pressure to end their lives because “they may be vulnerable because of age, serious mental illness… loneliness, poverty, homelessness, or disability”. Others may believe “that they are a burden to family or friends or the state”.
Addressing fears about pain at the end of life, she said: “Pain can in almost every situation be managed, if people can get expert palliative care,” adding that such care is often unavailable in poorer areas.
“If a person wants to live and to die naturally and with dignity then they should be able to do so,” she said, calling on governments to ensure access to care, carers and palliative services.
“Care and compassion actually involves ensuring that people, as they face the end of their life, are provided with the best care possible so that they can die naturally and with dignity,” she said.
