When it comes to finding reliable, unbiased information to help us understand the potential impacts of proposed assisted-dying legislation, where might be a sensible place to start? Perhaps doctors, palliative-care experts, or countries where similar laws are already in place.
Alternatively, we could quiz Magneto from the X-Men movies, or the narrator of the 2023 Barbie film.
‘Don’t be ridiculous’, you might say. ‘What would they know?’
Yet here we are. Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren and a number of other A-listers have signed a letter backing the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which is currently wending its way through the UK House of Lords. The letter repeats the same tired arguments that proponents of Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private members’ bill – which passed the House of Commons in June – have long espoused. Namely, that legalising assisted suicide is an act of compassion.
The thrust of the letter is utterly misguided. It claims that assisted suicide is ‘not a radical proposition’, and that the proposed legislation has been ‘carefully considered’. Both assertions are palpably false.
It is currently illegal in the United Kingdom to assist someone in ending their life. To overturn such a foundational legal and moral boundary by forcing our already-overstretched NHS to provide assisted suicide surely meets anyone’s definition of a ‘radical’ change.
It is equally dubious to claim that Leadbeater’s bill is ‘carefully considered’. One need only look to the 50-plus Labour MPs who, in June, demanded a final vote on the bill be delayed because they hadn’t had enough time to scrutinise it. A letter sent by the MPs described the mechanism of a private members’ bill as a ‘woefully inadequate vehicle for the introduction of such a foundational change to our NHS and the relationship between doctor and patient’.
We also have mountains of international evidence showing that once introduced, assisted-suicide and euthanasia laws rapidly expand in scope. The celebrity letter itself already hints that this is the intended direction. It suggests the supposed benefits of the law should be extended to ‘every Briton – including the terminally ill’, because ‘every person deserves’ the option to end their own life.
Notably, Leadbeater herself has addressed an event organised by ‘My Death, My Decision’ – a group openly campaigning for eligibility for assisted suicide to extend beyond terminal illness. The direction of travel is clear, and it is not towards restraint.
Canada offers the starkest warning. Assisted suicide and euthanasia were legalised there in 2016. Then prime minister Justin Trudeau hailed it as merely a ‘big first step’. Since then, the eligibility criteria have widened to the point that the Quebec College of Physicians has now called for euthanasia to be permitted for newborn babies with disabilities. This is not sensationalism. It is a documented policy discussion.
One of the signatories to the celebrity letter, Esther Rantzen, once insisted reports of such horrors were surely exaggerated, because ‘Canadians are renowned for their compassion’. As if national character were an ethical safeguard.
Oregon – another jurisdiction frequently cited by pro-assisted-suicide campaigners – offers another grim example. From 2018 to 2022, more than 50 per cent of people who chose assisted suicide did so because they felt they were a ‘burden on family, friends / caregivers’. When the decision to live or die is shaped by social pressure, insecurity, or a sense of personal dispensability, we cannot simply regard it as yet another choice.
This is precisely why the Leadbeater bill has been rushed through parliament at breakneck speed. Most amendments have not even been voted on and many MPs have been unable to participate properly in debate. If the true consequences and international evidence were fully aired, public support would collapse.
British political culture has long been in the habit of lending moral weight to celebrity endorsements. Of course, sometimes it can be helpful for celebrities to lend a friendly face to a pressing issue. Take Elizabeth Taylor’s celebrated work with AIDS charities, or presenter Anne Diamond’s emotive campaign on sudden infant death syndrome following her son’s death in the 1990s.
Sadly, this can work both ways, though. Actors, for one, tend to be the ultimate conformists, all too happy to parrot fleeting, ‘fashionable’ opinions.
Parliament should feel under no obligation whatsoever to legislate according to the whims of the glitterati – particularly when it comes to matters of life and death.
Georgia L Gilholy is a freelance journalist living in London.
