A disabled activist spoke out in July against any future legalisation of assisted suicide, saying it would send a message that disabled people are ‘a burden’.
Jamie Hale made the comments in The Guardian, responding to the legal case involving Noel Conway, who wants to make assisted suicide legal. Hale wrote: ‘When legislating to allow assisted suicide, it is impossible to implement effective safeguards that limit it to people at the end of their lives who are not experiencing mental illness or undue pressure.
‘Feeling like a burden is one of the greatest risk factors for suicide: disabled and terminally ill people like me are constantly told that we are a financial, emotional and practical burden on society, with the strong implication that we would be better off not being a burden.
‘Assisted suicide would turn doctors’ ‘predictions and judgments into a matter of life and death – and even one unnecessarily early death resulting from a change in the law would be one too many.
‘Assisted suicide might be cheaper and easier, but the necessary social and medical care to experience a dignified decline and a painless, comfortable death would be infinitely more valuable than the unnecessary shortening of peoples lives.’
