New law will offer the right to a good death
Growing up in Canada in the 1960s, my mother had a school friend called Merry. While they lost contact for a time, decades later, travel and technology brought them back together, until in 2019 Merry received news that she had a Glioblastoma – a rare and incurable brain cancer.
Tragically, Merry understood the terrible pathology of this cancer, because she had lost her husband to the same disease some years previously. Over time she had seen it rob him of his personality, his bodily function and his mind. She immediately knew that she would not let it do the same to her.
And so it was, just a few months later in a hospice rooftop garden, Merry ended her life in the Vancouver sunshine. At that moment of her choosing, my mother and her other friends, thousands of miles away, held Merry in the light of their love until she was free of it.
In my nine years as a member of the Scottish Parliament, there isn’t a single vote or decision I’ve been involved in that has elicited more correspondence from my constituents in West Edinburgh than last week’s vote on assisted dying. I respect the views of all of those who have written to me and I think it’s important that I set out where I stand.
Since before politics, I’ve been an advocate for a change in the law to allow terminally ill adults, who have mental capacity, the right to end their lives in dignity. For me, this is about rights and agency. In Scotland today we have both in almost every aspect of our adult life, save one – that is our departure from it.
I want to know that if I’m dying in pain, beyond the reach of palliative care, that I would have the right to say, “this far and no further” and to end my suffering at a time of my choosing. So, I was delighted when my friend and Lib Dem colleague Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying Bill, passed the first stage of the parliamentary process last week – and by a much bigger margin than expected.
We aren’t pioneers in this. The right to die is already offered to people in over 30 jurisdictions the world over and Liam’s bill is informed by decades of best practice. He has deliberately chosen a model for this bill which offers the most stringent safeguards. To be eligible, a person would need to be diagnosed by two separate doctors as having an advanced terminal illness and the mental capacity to make the decision. They would have to be made aware of all treatment options available and tests for coercion would take place. At the same time, any medic who doesn’t wish to take part, can opt out.
The decades of experience we are leaning into here show that provision for assisted dying does not come at the expense of palliative care. If anything, it is complimentary to it and is seen as the final tool in the drawer. Many prescriptions actually go unused but provide comfort as an option should the pain become too great. Palliative care is amazing, we need more of it, and we need to make it accessible everywhere. But it alone cannot master all pain. As such too many Scots are being denied the right to a good death. Liam’s bill will change that.
Alex Cole-Hamilton is Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and MSP for Edinburgh Western