We need to talk about it for a couple of good reasons: 1) we are a civilised, developed, intelligent, democratic society; 2) a Yorkshire MP - Kim Leadbeater , MP for Spen Valley - is putting forward a members’ bill today which means that for the first time in nine years, MPs will get a free vote on whether or not to legalise the taking of another human life in circumstances that permit as much. Advertisement Advertisement Pro-choice, liberty, freedoms campaigners will tell you that a change in the law is one that would afford dignity to suffering; compassion to those in pain; relief to slow-motion grievers whose spirits and souls are crushed by the spectacle of agonising decline, giving their everything in an attempt to make the end bearable. It is a compelling case; one that makes perfect, rational sense .
.. until you return to the immutable fact that this is a conversation about human beings.
Pro-life campaigners have made the case for not changing the law in the name of choice, pointing out that doing so runs the risk of the whole thing morphing from a right to die to a duty to die, with those who find themselves needing palliative care feeling they are a burden whose loved ones, and wider society, would be better off without them. Though, that is not the only tenet to the pro-life case; if we are that civilised, compassionate, intelligent society, pro-life campaigners say, then we must acknowledge that nobody has the right to end the life of another human being. What is.
