MP Letter: Assisted dying

Support for properly regulated assisted dying

Ask your MP to support the implementation of a legal framework for assisted dying.

Hints and tips

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Dear {{name}},

I urge you to support efforts to introduce a legal framework for assisted dying.

The absence of an assisted dying law leads to numerous UK citizens dying a slow and painful death. It also puts others at risk of imprisonment if they make the agonising yet compassionate decision to help a loved one to die.

The situation is intolerable and unsustainable because some people who would otherwise choose an assisted death will experience unbearable suffering even with the best available medical care. The Office of Health Economics estimates over 6,000 people a year would have no relief of their pain in the final three months of life even if hospice level care was universally available.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, every eight days someone from the UK travelled to Switzerland for help to die at the Dignitas clinic. And even this option is not viable for most people in the UK, due to the immense cost and the logistics of travelling with a serious illness.

Meanwhile, ten times as many dying people are ending their lives at home. Three hundred suicides in England each year involve a person with a terminal illness. Many attempted suicides are botched, leading to even more suffering.

Those wanting an assisted death may also seek the help of loved ones. This puts friends and relatives in a horrendous position: either they must watch their loved one suffer, or they must help them die and risk prosecution in the process.

The largest poll ever conducted on assisted dying has found 84% people in Great Britain support a change in the law. Polling of the disabled community shows comparable if not even higher levels of support. And despite much of the opposition to AD being driven by religious lobby groups, nearly 70% of people of faith also back a change in the law.

The time has therefore come for the law to be reformed to enable assisted dying, under a secure legal framework. As is happening in an increasing number of jurisdictions around the world, legislation can be passed that will fulfil the dual purpose of protecting vulnerable people from unwanted euthanasia or social pressures to end their lives, and supporting those who are suffering unbearably and who have exhausted all other options, to exercise their autonomy and to end their suffering in a humane and dignified manner.

I therefore urge you to work towards achieving a compassionate and safe legal framework that offers people the right in law to die, with dignity, in a time and manner of their own choosing.

Yours sincerely,

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MP Letter: Assisted dying

Support for properly regulated assisted dying

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