Westminster ‘assisted dying’ legislation will lead to serious injustices against the disabled people’s community, MPs have heard.
Dr Miro Griffiths MBE, a Disability Studies Scholar and expert adviser, raised concerns about a Bill from Kim Leadbeater MP at a House of Commons Committee this morning.
Appearing on a panel of experts, Dr Griffiths described his concerns about how an assisted suicide law would interact with “systemic injustices faced by disabled people”.
The academic stressed that disabled people would be eligible for assisted suicide under the terms of Kim Leadbeater’s Bill, given definitions in the Equality Act.
He cautioned that provisions on coercion are ineffective and would be undermined by the emergence of “sympathetic” ‘assisted dying’ practitioners after a law change.
And he warned that a change in the law may disproportionately impact disabled women, who face additional injustices that are not accounted for in the Bill.
Coercion
Dr Griffiths described provisions in the Bill on coercion as “incredibly weak”, adding that coercion “is a complex issue” that becomes even more difficult to assess in the context of disabled people’s lives, which are often marked by inequality and injustice.
He told MPs: “Coercion can manifest in very different ways and one can be exposed to the societal pressure to feel that your life is no longer tolerable because of the struggles that you have – in terms of accessing services, accessing provision, access support.
“We know from data that we have people in the [disabled people’s] community who are struggling to see their GPs, struggling to see their consultant associated with their conditions and changes in their condition. So, the coercion I feel will come from how society is organised and does not respond to the injustices faced by disabled people.
“I also think there’s a there’s a broader and slightly different issue as well, which is there’s nothing in the bill, in my view, that satisfies the concern that you would create a network of practitioners who are sympathetic to the principles of assisted dying.”
“They will be more receptive to those ideas that the individual has and therefore will facilitate their process, which I think undermines then any attempts to have objective scrutiny of the coercion that may occur”.
“There’s nothing that stops you from saying: ‘well, I know that there are these certain people I can go to who have supported others to have access to the service, and therefore, that’s my best chance of getting access’. And I think that then collapses attempts to address coercion.”
Threat to disabled women
Dr Griffiths also warned that disabled women may be more at risk of harm under an assisted suicide law, as they are exposed to “further levels of injustice”, and this issue isn’t addressed in the Bill.
He added, “what you will have, in my view, is individuals for whom the issues they face in terms of injustice will play into the consciousness of their decisions. I can’t understand any clause or any amendment that would address that issue in in its totality”.
Disabled people eligible
Dr Griffiths said a “fundamental flaw in the bill” is its “nonsensical division” between terminally person and a disabled person. He told MPs: “I have had meetings with clinicians where some have referred to my condition as a terminal illness, some have referred to it as a life limiting condition, and others as a progressive condition.
“The articulation of these ideas and the ways in which we think about conditions, again, I think shows the complexity that we are talking about.”
Dr Griffiths added: “People who are terminally ill do constitute as disabled people under the clauses of the Equality Act. So, you cannot make the distinction.”
Expansion likely
Dr Griffiths also warned that laws could be expanded over time: “As soon as you pass it on a six-month basis you will have individuals who would say, ‘why not seven months, why not five months?’ And then you’ll have campaigners who will say, ‘this doesn’t include me, and I’ve been campaigning for this’. So, there will be a pressure to change, and governments will change. So, there’s no guarantee that you can make that this the eligibility criteria will be fixed.”
ENDS
Better Way campaign opposes assisted suicide, sets out an alternative vision, and provides a platform for marginalised voices. The campaign is supported by experts in several fields including medicine, disability advocacy, and sociology.
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