A further thought on the defeat of the assisted dying bill

I just want to comment briefly on Andrew Tickell's column about the Scottish Parliament's rejection of the assisted dying bill.  He argues that the opponents of the bill, if they want to be logically consistent, would have to now argue for a new law to be brought in to criminalise and punish anyone who assists a suicide, by for example facilitating a journey to a clinic in Switzerland.  He suggests that all of the claims that were made about the risks of coercion would apply just as much to assisted suicides of Scots that occur in another jurisdiction, and thus to prove that the worries about coercion were genuine and not bogus, we are somehow obliged to want to send people to jail for helping others get to Switzerland.

I have to say that doesn't stack up at all.  The point that was actually made about coercion during the debate was that it can be very subtle and it's thus impossible to know for sure whether it has occurred in any particular case.  That's one key reason why it would be irresponsible to legalise assisted suicide in our own jurisdiction, but it's also the main reason why it would be wildly disproportionate in most instances to prosecute someone who has already, as an established fact that cannot be changed or reversed, helped a seriously ill loved one to die in another jurisdiction.  You could never be certain of exact motivations, so the standard of 'beyond reasonable doubt' would rarely even come close to being met.  The legal system is not there to wreck the lives of nine people who acted with the best of intentions just to be sure of punishing the tenth person who actually did behave coercively, and I'd be amazed if Andrew Tickell of all people does believe that's the way it's supposed to work.

His notion that the logic of the bill's opponents is exploded by the mere possibility of assisted suicide in another jurisdiction can just as easily be turned on its head.  Andrew could be asked why, if people always have the option of going to Switzerland, such a song and dance was made about the supposedly vital importance of legalising assisted dying here?  The reality, of course, is that the need to go to another country is a very, very substantial bar for the majority of people.  Parliamentarians thus had a very real and meaningful decision to make, and a decision in the negative was no more of a sham or a cop-out than a decision in the affirmative would have been.