In 2021 Sunday times he took up the case of Douglas Laing, who wrote to the newspaper “in support of the movement to legalize assisted dying.” His determination to change the law was demonstrated by a secret he has only now made public – in 1998, he illegally injected his first wife, Christine, with lethal drugs, preventing her expected death from terminal cancer. Laing made it clear that Christine chose this death; he just helped.

Laing was a useful case study for Sunday times. The newspaper has already carried out an editorial campaign to legalize ‘assisted dying’, launched after the House of Representatives representative, Baroness Meacher, introduced a private member’s bill in favor of it in the House of Lords. (As I wrote in 2022, those of us who are skeptical prefer the term “assisted suicide,” while “assisted dying” should refer to ethical palliative care.)

Both people were advised by the charity Dying in Dignity, which campaigns for people dying “to control when and how they die.” In practice, this usually means letting someone help you; suicide, although it destroys loved ones, is already legal.

Dying in Dignity also supported Laing as police announced they were investigating Christine’s death. The Sunday times he thundered in his defense, adding an editorial describing Laing as a “loving husband” facing an “idiotic investigation.”

Then something uncomfortable happened. Private eye reported that Laing, a “loving husband”, had experienced violence against women. In 2017, he was sentenced to three years in prison for attacking his second wife, Susan, and hitting her in the head three times with a hammer. During this time, Laing gave a stormy interview to Sunday timesafter which he claimed to have a new partner, he had only recently been released from prison.

The tacit assumption has become that it is simply a matter of “when,” not “if,” assisted suicide will be legalized in this country. As political parties announce their manifestos, the election campaign is dominated by several policy areas – taxes, immigration, national security. But read each manifesto carefully and it will also reveal more intimate ways in which the next government will change the way we live and die.

Each party is preparing for a parliamentary debate on assisted suicide. Sir Keir Starmer, who is widely expected to become the next prime minister, has said he is “personally committed” to finding time in parliament to introduce the legislation. This would put us on par with US states such as Oregon – whose state law is a model for the Dignity in Dying campaign – and Canada.

The public debate has overlooked the enormous impact of assisted suicide laws on the poor, disabled and women in these regions.

If we talk about assisted suicide, we need to talk about sex and gender. We know that sex has a huge impact on all the suicide statistics we already have. We know that healthy men are much more likely to die by suicide than women. We know this reflects the different pressures on men and women – young men struggling with societal expectations of uncomplaining strength – as well as their attitudes towards social bonds: mothers are much less likely to die by suicide and leave behind children than fathers.

But look at the statistics on suicides caused by others and you will notice that something is changing in the assessment of gender. In countries such as the Netherlands that allow “psychiatric euthanasia” – such as physician-assisted death for people with depression – 69 to 77 percent of those who choose it are women. We also know that women who have experienced domestic violence are among the most likely to die by suicide.

If you raise concerns about which groups in society are most likely to be forced into or choose assisted suicide in response to psychological trauma, you will be advised that any such law – such as Baroness Meacher’s bill – would provide appropriate safeguards.

Read on

Many of the country’s leading “assisted dying” activists make clear that their actions are only intended to expand this option to terminally ill people. It was under these conditions that the first such legislation was introduced in Oregon in 1997; since then, doctors in Oregon have offered medically assisted suicide to people suffering from anorexia, arthritis and hernias. In Canada, doctors have been caught offering assisted suicide to the homeless, people struggling to access disability benefits and veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Sometimes a slippery slope is actually a slippery slope.

Even for those who are certainly terminally ill, it seems unlikely that anyone would truly make end-of-life decisions without incurring the high costs of end-of-life care. This also has a gendered dimension. In Australia, women who sought help with suicide were much more likely than men to give the reason that they did not want to be a burden to the families caring for them. (It is certainly important that heterosexual men are more likely than women to leave a partner who begins to need care).

In a world where men continue to be pressured to be providers and women to be caregivers, men are most likely to die by suicide at some point in their lives – from adolescence to middle age – when they have difficulty providing financial resources, while women do it. at the stage of life – old age – when they require care.

If we accept “assisted dying” in principle, we as a nation will accept that people should actively participate in conversations about the time of death of their loved ones. However, those who fight for this cultural change now pretend that if someone chooses to die, they can always do so without the pressures of family and finances. (It remains strange that the left proposes this – to use leftist language, it requires a possibly radically neoliberal worldview; an autonomous individual torn from the community).

The cause of “assisted dying” is promoted by prominent stars, including presenter Esther Rantzen. But it’s not the wealthiest among us who know what the struggle for care costs means for families and the mixed incentives this creates. Not surprisingly, this shortcut to death has met with the fiercest opposition from disability activists.

It may already be too late for opponents of assisted suicide to prevail on this argument. But the next government will have to show that it has taken into account the consequences for the most vulnerable groups in society. My particular appeal is that no ‘assisted dying’ legislation be passed without an independent gender and sex impact assessment.

Whether a man or a woman, the law should prevent any person convicted of domestic violence from “attending” the death of their partner. In honor Sunday timesposter boy, we can call it David’s Law.