The Bill has many ambiguities. I shall mention just three of them here to illustrate that its figleaf “safeguards” are totally inadequate.
Part of the Bill’s definition of “terminal illness” (section 2 (1a)) is one of an “inevitably progressive illness, disease or medical condition which cannot be reversed by treatment”. Will potentially curative treatment be offered to the same extent as at present if the patient could opt for assisted suicide?
Disability and psychiatric illness are both currently excluded (section 2 (3)) as sole reasons for eligibility for assisted suicide but these restrictions are untenable long-term in the light of the emerging concept of “terminal psychiatric illness” and the fact that many young patients with anorexia nervosa have already had their lives ended by assisted suicide in countries where the practice is legal.
Should the UK Bill become enacted, there will be legal challenges to the “discrimination” of restricting access to the “terminally ill” under any definition. The suffering of those with painful chronic but not life-threatening illnesses will successfully be claimed in the courts for their right also to state assistance to end their lives. Once the principle of individual autonomy taking precedence over the protection of the vulnerable has been conceded, as it has by this recent vote, its extension to other groups is inevitable.
Covert euthanasia
My second concern is about what the Bill permits doctors to do and what essential details remain unspecified. The doctor may (section 18 (6)):