COMMENT: Why is a ‘good death’ only available to the rich?

Have you ever stood in a room and imagined the lives of the surrounding strangers? You see a child, the embodiment of purity and naivety. Behind her beaming smile, is a young girl who will one day change the world. You look to your left. There sits an elderly man in a wheelchair. His hair frosty and his face decorated by wrinkles and the reminder that we are getting older. Though he can no longer remember his name or the one who got away, as a 22-year-old, he was a soldier who was drafted to Korea and fought for what he was told was right. Standing beside you is a young man – a man who has a life to live – a life he deserves to live, but is slowly dying of bowel cancer. Externally, he is a spontaneous chap whose laughter is a circus, but internally, he’s a boy who does not want to die, and especially not like this.

But he doesn’t have a choice. At 20-years-old, he will die in a ward, having lived his final year with what felt like a clock ticking away in his mind, knowing he had no control over his own life and death.

This year, it is estimated that 350 Britons will travel to Switzerland to die, and anyone of them could have been standing in that room with you.

When translated into Greek, the word euthanasia means “good death”, so is it not ironic that such a privilege is only reserved for those who are fortunate to be able to afford the £10,000 to travel to Zürich – the largest city in Switzerland and Europe’s ‘assisted dying capital?’

The law makes criminals out of the vulnerable.

In our lives, money burdens and controls us, but apparently it extends into death. So, how accessible is a ‘dignified death’ by assisted suicide in this country? Bluntly, for many it is impossible.

In 2017, the Money Charity’s annual financial report found that 68% of families in this country have less than £10,000 in their savings, while 35% had no savings at all. The criminalisation of assisted dying in the UK does not just discriminate against the dying, but also the poor.

The legalisation of assisted dying in the UK would not only remove the curtain of capitalism from the conversation, but it would make the possibility of a “good death” accessible to all and not just an option for the elitist. For a country which demands equality, is it not ironic that we are denied such rights at the very end?

Although classism encourages the obeying of the 1961 “Suicide Act” which considers assisted dying as a form of murder, it does not prevent it. The law makes criminals out of the vulnerable, the ill and the innocent who are forced to undertake the task themselves.

In 2019, 80-year-old Mavis Eccleston was accused by the justice system of forcing her deceased 81-year-old husband to consume a large amount of lethal prescription drugs. Within the same 24 hours, Mavis became a widow and, according to the law, a criminal, because she decided to honour the final wish of the man whom she loved… A decision which she was forced to undertake because of the outdated “Suicide Act” and because of parliament’s hesitancy to address a reformation of the law.

But euthanasia is not just ‘permitted’ for the elite who can afford to undertake the procedure abroad, according to this country’s history, it is ethically acceptable for a royal to have their tormented death quickened to preserve their dignity. To the public’s knowledge, royal euthanasia has taken place at least twice, when in 1936 George V was given a lethal dose of cocaine and morphine and in 1938 with his sister Queen Maud of Norway.

In accordance with the ideology of the late Debbie Purdy, a fundamental contributor to the discussion of euthanasia, nobody wants to die, they just do not want to suffer any longer. Our outdated law is not only encouraging the continued suffering of the dying, but also criminalising them and their families for even the consideration of terminating their lives.

As Britons, our right to life is protected under the Human Rights Act, but it seems to forget that to live, we have to die and to die, we have to have lived.

“We don’t want to die alone or abandoned, but most of all, nobody wants to die in pain.” -Professor Pierre Mallia.