UK opinion polls for the past five years have consistently shown majority support for Assisted Dying. Most recently the figures have been between 70% and 80%. It is therefore puzzling that the success or failure of the current Bill going through the House of Commons should be considered a matter of touch and go when it comes up for its final reading on Friday 13th June. Last Autumn it would have seemed almost inconceivable that Parliamentary opinion should be lagging so far behind the opinions of the electorate.
Maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised, though. At the beginning of 2024, “medical aid in dying” had already become legal in ten states in America as well as in Washington DC. Its further progress was assumed likely. 66% of people polled agreed that doctors should “be allowed by law to assist the patient to commit suicide”. Yet in that year, although it was considered in 20 further state legislatures, it failed every time. Each had been seeking a reform along the lines of the Oregon model. In Delaware the Bill passed through both the state house and the state senate, then the Governor vetoed it. In Maryland, the Governor said he was all in favour, only for the Bill to fail (by one vote) in the senate.
So why is it that in both Britain and America there should be such a rift between what the public wants and what the legislators are giving them ? Both are functioning democracies. They share a common language and, substantially, a common history. In neither country is it a party political issue. In the US, majorities of both Republicans and Democrats are in favour. In the UK, most Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Nationalist and Green voters support it, too.
Unusually, there are no real vested interests or well-funded lobbyists campaigning against a change. Obviously, frequent church-goers tend to be substantially opposed, as do some clever lawyers. The argument over “safeguards” seems to have had an unusually powerful effect. Behind it all though, is a discernible sentiment amongst legislators on both sides of the Atlantic that they know best, that the public haven’t really got their heads around this issue and that problems of such complexity should be left to the experts – such as the legislators themselves.
