Why the Assisted Dying Bill is a vital step for the terminally ill

By Cat Eccles

On Friday 29th November, my fellow colleagues and I will debate and vote on the Second Reading of the Assisted Dying (Terminally Ill) Bill. This decision is weighing heavy on all my colleagues in the House.

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Before becoming an MP in July, I have spent my professional life in the NHS. I started on Patient Transport, conveying terminally ill people to and from the hospice. Most recently, I was a Senior Operating Department Practitioner. My career and my experience prior to becoming an MP has left me with a profound belief on the Assisted Dying Bill: it is absolutely necessary.

It is necessary for the patients who receive a terminal diagnosis and go through untold agony – both mentally and physically – and are unable to do anything about it. The current law grants them no agency or proactivity over their own lives. They must simply endure the pain and the growing weaknesses in their body. I have met over the course of my career so many patients who have expressed a wish to die with dignity and on their own terms.

I am not alone in this. My colleagues in the NHS have experienced the same. Many of my constituents too have told stories of friends and family members who have found themselves with a terminal diagnosis, and their agony over the course of their life draining away. This Bill is about restoring choice to these people.

There are studies of comparative countries which have introduced Assisted Dying legislation, and whilst the methods and implementation differ country to country, one of the things that is consistent is the psychological impact. That you know you can have a choice of when you can die, where you can die, and surrounded by who – is a thing that has never existed in the history of humanity.

The matter of Assisted Dying is about giving people the freedom to choose. When Austria brought Assisted Dying into law, they combined this announcement with a commitment to an increase in Palliative Care funding. Whilst I cannot make such commitments on behalf of this government and our budget, what I can say is that this goes to show that these matters are separate. A government can increase their palliative care funding and strive to maintain this important aspect of end of life support for terminally ill people, whilst also allowing those same individuals with terminal illness the choice to opt for a controlled alternative if they so wish.

One thing that has stuck out to me more than anything in this debate is that there is a trend that those who support it have had prior experiences. I have never heard from someone who is opposed to this law, who has also witnessed a traumatic final months for a loved one. I am sure that they exist, but as it stands I have found that experience is everything. The experiences of those with a terminal illness, families and friends who have lost someone that way, and those who work in end of life care and hear the pleas for help – they do support this change.

This is not a conversation about politics, but a conversation about conscience and morality. Is it morally correct that people who are suffering, losing dignity with every moment they are forced to cling on to a life escaping them, should have no choice but to relieve themselves of this pain? Is that something we should maintain - especially as individual voting who (to my knowledge) are not terminally ill? Why do we have the right to make that choice for them. Voting for Assisted Dying offers the choice and freedom of decision to return to these individuals. To choose how they wish to pass. To leave life in the way they wish. To be remembered as the person they want to be remembered, instead of Mother Nature and Father Time snatching this from them at every opportunity.

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Cat Eccles is the Labour MP for Stourbridge.

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