Assisted dying debate: Lord Moore vs Lord Falconer
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- Опубликовано: 19 окт 2024
- Parliament is set to debate legalising assisted dying, following a bill introduced by MP Kim Leadbeater. The former justice secretary Lord Falconer (who introduced a similar bill to the Lords) and The Spectator’s chairman Lord Moore sat down to debate the idea. Do we all deserve the right to choose? Or, is this the overreach of the state, endangering vulnerable people?
You can also read this debate in the magazine, or online, here: www.spectator....
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My wife had cancer, last year she was moved into palliative care with an expectation that she would have 12-24 months+. 2 weeks later she was in a car accident with an injury that had no impact on her cancer care yet from the moment she entered A+E the Drs were pressing for DNR to be put on her records. It felt like being surrounded by hardsell timeshare holiday sales men on commission for each DNR they got signed up. At 4am I left my fit and alert wife in A+E to go home, let out the dogs and get some sleep myself, when i returned at 9AM she was comatosed through "painkillers" which had been given to her literally 30 minutes after I'd left (when she hadn't been in pain) but also after she'd changed her mind from being adamant she should be revived, to choosing to be DNR. She died three days later.
This wasn't her choice, this wasn't her wishes, this was murder by the NHS and the medical establishment because they felt they knew best and damn the patients wishes. To make this even easier by legislation to allow assisted dying fills me with dread.
So sorry for your loss and the manner of your wife’s passing 😢
Did you make a formal complaint?
@@YesYes-xb6he I am so sorry for your loss and horrified by your wife’s treatment. You could take them to court , if you have the fight in you, but don’t let it take over your life, to the detriment of your own mental health. Take care.
I would surmise you have a colored view of the events, in any case my condolences.
As a carer for a disabled person, I worry that we could reach a point where actors on behalf of the state would start applying pressure on disabled persons and their carers. There would certainly be a financial incentive for the state to do this.
Such concerns seem to override the enforced misery of those who are terminally ill. People should be able to register their wishes on this topic while they are fit and well. Personally I think when the quality phase of life is over people should be able to give up with dignity.
This is what has started happening in Canada, and the Netherlands. Soldier with ptsd where offered euthanasia in Canada, and a young woman who suffered with depression, no terminal disease, recently ended her life via euthanasia in the Netherlands. It’s sick, and it’s eugenics.
@@M896 I suspect that the private providers woud eat into this 'incentive'. They calculate the 'savings' and set prices to include 'gainshare'.
Agree 100 %. Trouble is that British people cannot be trusted not to lust after their inheritance ? This is the first country where I have become aware of such attitudes..... Did empire teach them to behave like this ?
@@beammeup8458 Wow!
Charles Moore has a massive intellect
Seems strange that this issue comes to a head as the country hits bankruptcy.
Compassion, or just relieving the financial burden of long term hospice care?
There’s something intuitively off about Falconer - the way he attempts to re-frame the other argument, constantly interrupting, continuous appealing to compassion - he knows where it will go wrong but doesn’t care. This bill will useful to those concerned about the aging demographics - it provides an easy solution. The fact is the slippery slope cliche because of how often it repeats itself in reality.
I wish Falconer realized that families listening are involved in these situations now and want to hear Lord Moore speak.
He is sugar coating it, selling it. I'd go in much much harder.
he is just extremely well-versed and practiced in his lines of argument, given that it is his bill. Lord Charles Moore probably has not debated this particular issue very much in comparison to him.
Constantly interrupting? Absolute lies. You need a reality check.
Constant interruptions are annoying, yes.
How can it be an overreach of the state if it gives more freedom to the individual? Prosecutions are currently small but the number of people who die having endured great pain and suffering is huge . We need to right the balance in favour of choice and kindness.
Pets can receive mercy, humans are expected to suffer without end.
Prosecutions for this should end, it should be decriminalised, not legalised. For one simple reason, doctors should focus on saving lives, they shouldn’t be advocating and pushing for patients to kill themselves… we’ve already seen in Canada and the Netherlands, that this extends far beyond terminal illness…
Fully agree with Lord Moore.
Lord Falconer has got his foot in the door just calling it a terminal illness bill. Didn't Lord Steele do the same in the cause of abortion bill..
The opposite of this is state sanctioned torture for people who face a terrible end.
Yes
Ah, looking aside is so much easier than saying it's a positive action. A real software failure in most humans
It's totally wrong and will escalate as in Canada.
It is totally wrong *in your opinion* and *you worry that* it will escalate as in Canada
Every country that has introduced this type of legislation has different and "slacker" legislation now to when it was first introduced.@@thomashobbs1498
Lots of light & pretty much no heat generated by a model debate on one of the most difficult topics possible. 👏🎩 Hats off to Lords Falconer & Moore for a thoughtful exploration & for a model of civil & respectful debate - expanding understanding for everyone. 🎩👏
What! Are you incapable of having a conversation without resorting to hysteria and violence?
@@stirlingmoss9637 Good to hear a calm, informative weighing of the pros & cons of a difficult subject. Rather than the sensationalised partisan argument - generating more heat than light - that is all to common. Don't you agree?
The road to HELL is paved with good intentions
More worryingly, the road to Heaven is tiled with avoidable suffering.
No such place.
20:43 at the moment the law prevents people from helping others out of agony. I watched my mother dye over many days with well meaning carers telling me how peaceful she looked and all I could see was pain and pleading in her eyes. We had had discussions over the years about her wishes yet I was unable to spied her inevitable death. Palliative care meant withdrawing food and water and giving hefty doses of morphine. She was starved, thirsty ( she could no longer swallow) and she was semi conscious. I am told this regime is quite normal for the end days of palliative care. Would I do this to my pet? Would we allow vets to create a slow death for our animals? Seems to me the law should step aside and let us all choose by writing living wills when we are alive and well expressing how we would like to be treated when we are in physical or mental pain because of an incurable illness . We will all experience at least one incurable illness. We are now allowed to say ‘do not resuscitate’ but not allowed to say ‘if I cannot look after myself, if I can no longer eat, drink, walk etc if I am obviously not going to get better - please put me to sleep as quickly and humanely as possible. As humans we have become more humane towards animals in the law but not to ourselves.
@@lorrainemaddams4996 How brave to write this. I was moved by your words and very well said/written they were to.
My mother is going through this currently, if the option were available we would have ended her suffering months ago. But no, the opinions of people she has never met means she must go out of this world in agony and a drug addict. Day after day laying in bed in agony and fear. People with opposing view to assisted suicide often have simply not seen the alternative close up, it is something to be feared.
I am so sorry for you and your mother. Somethings in our society are difficult to believe until one experiences them personally.
Lord Sumption called it correctly: whatever the moral argument for any individual case the threshold for the legal & societal change can never be met.
So people should stand with courage by their convictions & pay the cost for doing so or trust that a jury of their peers will judge the individual case with the mercy it merits.
I found the lawyerly responses to Sumption amazing. How can a person endure 14 or more years of education and think that the law and justice are the same thing. Only lawyers could pay so much to be so wrong.
where did he say this? cheers
Killing granny bill 😡
Despatching her for her house and bank balance before she’s pushed off into an expensive care home.
Thin end of the wedge. It’s immoral.
I find it astonishing that people I have never met have decided I am their property, their toy, a plaything to slightly improve their emotions on occasion.
The question becomes: if someone has been told they are terminally ill, that their condition will deteriorate to the point & that they will become totally dependent on others for their every human function, & they will have zero quality of life, why would they wait until that eventuality? Why not just do it now, while they can, instead of roping in another person to administer the fatal blow?
If it were me, I’d do it myself while I was still physically capable, rather than inflict such an awful task on someone dear to me..
I share that sentiment but easier said than done.
SpectatorTV at its best - thank you
“Subject to safeguards” is conveniently vague. As evidenced by Canada safeguards vary from time to time.
The underlying problem is the absence of adequate provision of palliative care and a broken health service that produces the worst outcomes compared with any other developed nation. Euthanasia used to be the province of vets and Nazis. Soon to be the policy of the UK government to ease the cost of health care in old age. Labour promised change ..... here it comes!
The population of old people is set to double, this is not going to end well. Also I'm witnessing palliative care up close now, I'd take an early exit every time.
torture was also a nazi practice but thats already legaly enforced in our country on the termianlly ill
Two points. Firstly the UK pop is now growing faster than in the last 50 years and that’s not due to an influx of pensioners. Secondly, you reinforce my concern that palliative care is neglected in the UK, as is care for cancer and heart conditions. The govt needs euthanasia to protect the exchequer and the NHS
Open a new door a little. Once there's a foot in the doorway the door gradually gets more and more open until there is no need for it and everyone can go through the doorway. Put the question," have you considered assisted dying?" In connection with any mental or physical issues affecting someone at any age and that is enough to start a campaign to get that doorway open to all...
Such a blatantly middle class bill. Only suitable for people with really long life expectancies but for poorer people with much lower life expectancies this will be pushed as an option to save costs.
Well done Lord Moore!
Falconer is obfuscating. Standard tactic of progressives to argue that nothing is really being done here, and that in any event we all agree about the straw man example he uses to push the argument.
What an excellent debate on this very controversial issues. We need much more of this, rather than have labour rush this bill through parliament, carried by newly elected intellectual pygmies who largely haven't thought it through properly. This debate hasn't changed my personal view, I'm against assisted suicide, but I've heard no other of such quality.
You should be able to choose a terrible end if you wish it so but why should your view impact my wish to opt out?
The Labour front bench is filled with very shallow people.
I agree with assisted dying only if it’s outside government control.
What does that even mean?
@@stirlingmoss9637 study the english language and read it again.
@@stirlingmoss9637 I meant something similar to Switzerland. Definitely not by NHS
These nit picking windbags are the same people who willingly sent fit young servicemen to fight and die in illegal wars. Sickening.
two wrongs are not right
Why, in this age, are we so insistent on everything amoral thriving. This constant pushing and inviting in chaos. It’s so frustrating to watch our society regress.
News flash: You can’t choose to be born. You can’t choose when or how to die (unless you commit suicide… yes, commit!). You can’t choose to live forever.
We’re obsessed with controlling every single aspect of our lives. I can’t help but think we’re doing this ‘life’ wrong.
If the law doesn't prosecute at the moment, as it is, dont give it credence.
Falconer doesn't seem to comprehend that changing the meaning of suicide, whether assisted or not, changes our relation, and the shape that our compassion takes, to those who are suicidal. The point about assisted suicide is to be compassionate to those who are deemed close to death but who are desperate to end it early with 'dignity'. But if your compassion takes that shape why have an arbitrary cut off point and why only people who are close to death when logically it is those with a long time to live with similar circumstances who should be at the front of the queue. Falconer thinks his bill will be the end of the matter, but he cannot know that.
Thank God for the steadfastness of the Roman Catholic Church in times like these.
It's good to see them borrowing those paedophile protecting energies for other topics.
An irrelevant institution
Thank you
Thanks for mentioning tinnitus - I have appalling tinnitus almost incessantly day and night - and a lot more serious things than that.
If someone is failing to cope with their job, then they should not be in that role.
The decision needs to be made by Dr's and Juries, not Civil Servants or an outsourced charity. Look at the madness in other areas, which can be corrected. Death cannot be corrected hence why there is no death sentence.
Unfortunately I think the gentleman with the red tie, towards the end, inflamed the argument when eugenics was brought up. This is a very contextualised bill and is morally indefensible to extrapolate this bill to something as hideous as eugenics I.e. a much wider audience. It doesn't open the flood gates to other circumstances when the probability of such exaggerated events naturally occuring are highly unlikely. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that assisted suicide for the purpose of societal cleansing is a immoral. But it is morally acceptable to aid those with a terminal illness for the very fact that they are towards the end of their lives and not the other way.
An interesting and stimulating discussion. Thank you.
We simply need to government support the hospice sector it needs more funding
That won't remotely address this issue
Falconer’s argument is SO weak. “We don’t currently prosecute when ‘compassion’ is demonstrated so helping someone commit suicide should be legal”. So incredibly stupid it manages to incorporate two fallacies into one sentence: the is-ought fallacy and the resurrection of Bentham’s “gunman writ large” view of the law (which, to any lawyer who actually understands the law, was hung drawn and quartered by HLA Hart in his Concept of Law many decades ago now).
The best argument AGAINST any legal proposal is “Lord Falconer supports it” - just look at his record: Constitutional Reform Act, Equality Act, Iraq … the list is nearly endless
Physical suffering is nothing in comparison with other suffering - both of my parents brushed it aside. I think it is really evil to make so much out of snuffing people to avoid physical pain.
I think it's evil to insist on people suffering at the end of their life
@@M896 I think palliative care wants investigating for malpractice as something that borders on assisted suicide proper. And so to hell.
@@maureenelsden1927 I hope the day comes when you get to experience what you are all too willing for others to suffer. You'll change your tune then for sure, selfish
Grazie grazie grazie ❤❤❤
Falconer looks as if he could do with a devotion to the Cross and some fasting.
WE HAVE TO TRUST IN THE EMPATHY OF CHRIST ON THE CROSS. AVE CRUX, SPES UNICA! Hail Cross, Only Hope!
Christ never existed, just religious nonsense from the middle ages
'Lord Charlie Falconer and Lord Charles Moore' - Don't they both sit in the House of Lords? If so, this is quite the wrong form of reference. Perhaps the presenter thinks that Lord Randolph Churchill sat in the House of Lords...? What a dreadfully ignorant human being!
I found the comment about it being a situation where one is out of control of the situation correct. We want to stop our own suffering as we can't accept someone else's suffering.
Maybe you haven't witnessed someone else's suffering close up for months
Only God chooses the day. Go against God and see what happens.
I'd happily take my chances
I agree with Lord Moore’s side of this debate against Lord Falconer who comes over as self obsessed.
In the Tory leadership ballot I voted for Jenrick because of his arguments, but could never have voted for Badenoch due to her support for assisted killing alone.
I am your sister from Yemen, and by Allah I only spoke out of hunger and distress. My mother, my brothers, and I lessons and tears. We are in a situation that only God knows about. God is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs for those who broughtOh people, we are your sisters, by God 😭😭😭 We do not even find a loaf of bread inside the house that would satisfy you, oh nation of Muhammad. People are brothers. Oh God, make your righteous servants subservient to us. Oh God, make your righteous servants subservient to us. My appeal to every Muslim, oh Lord, if he sees this message, may He prolong his life, make him happy, and cover him. May God reward him. God is sufficient for me, and He is the best disposer of affairs. There is no power or strength except with God. Oh people, oh nation of Muhammad, oh people of goodness, oh people of mercy. We are your sisters and your children. By God, we do not even find a loaf of bread inside the house that would satisfy you. Oh nation of Muhammad, I only spoke out of extreme hunger and distress. My mother, sisters, and I are displaced from our homes because of the war. We are in a state that no one knows about except God. God is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs, against those who brought us to this state 💔💔 By God Almighty, I only wrote this appeal out of extreme poverty and poverty, oh people. I beg you by God Almighty, Lord of the Mighty Throne, that I do not have food at home. By God, my brothers and sisters have been sitting around for two days. Without food, by God our situation is very difficult, we are 4 people in the house and my father passed away and there is no one to support us and we live in a rented house and we cannot pay the rest of the rent. I am not lying to you nor deceiving you nor cheating you. I am a Yemeni girl displaced because of the war between me and my family over a rent dispute and the owner of the house. By God, my brother comes every day and humiliates us and talks about us and wants us to go out to the street because we are unable to pay him the rent. The neighbors saw us crying and talked to the neighbors again and gave us a deadline until the end of the week and we swore to God to let us out of the street now we are in arrears of 60 thousand Yemeni riyals for 3 months rent may God have mercy on us our country is suffering because of this war and we do not find our daily sustenance and we live my mother and sisters our father passed away may God have mercy on him and we do not have anyone in the world to come to us in these harsh circumstances my little sisters went out to the street and saw the neighbors eating and stood at their door giving them even a piece of bread and by God in whose hand is the heavens and the earth they closed the door and kicked them out and they came back crying dying of hunger no one has mercy on them and now the holiday has come back to me if no one of us helps us with a kilo of flour by God we will die of hunger brother I seek refuge in God and then in you and I want your help for the sake of God I ask you by God you love goodness and help me even if it is about the rent of the house send me a WhatsApp message on this number 00967735950939 and ask for my card name and send it and do not delay may God compensate you with all good My little sisters, look at their situation and help us and save us before they throw us out into the street and humiliate us or my family and I die of hunger. We ask you by God, if you are able to help us, do not delay on us, and may God reward you with good.'~~_«%•&»_~~ _~&:»'////;&;&;&;;&🎉😢😢😢😢;&;&&//&.,?~~~♡♡~~~♡~~♡~•~•~•(･|.}]◤)~♡ ~♡~;l.ii.i.i.l.|-.💔`~`π😭
The patronising tone and condecesnion of Falconer and people like him are the only reason you need to think this bill is going to be a disaster. These are ideological people.
Esther Rantzen's new TV show.
That's Death.
I appreciate this debate.
I have paid too little attention to the terminal vs. non-terminal point, it seems that one of these subverts the State's monopoly on violence, while the other does not.
I have become somewhat better-educated on this topic lately, the above-mentioned is a key point of debate, here in the US as well.
I am some kind of 'subspecies' of Libertarian myself, (as everyone is 'supposed' to be, in a free, functional society,) however, taking 'non-terminal' lives seems to surpass, even the wide legal parameters of a free liberal society.
Almost all other considerations discussed, in contrast, would seem to be cultural, as opposed to legal in nature.
Many of these strike me as legitimate concerns.
Yet I maintain that responsibility for the maintenance of culture, formally lies with citizens and private community groups, as opposed to the apparatus of government.
The health of civil society, should not be understood to directly involve governance, except in extreme, or emergency situations which require practical exception, and which have precedence in the historical declaration of martial law.
Across all other instances, legal and governing establishments in the West (when most functional) are intended to establish wide limiting parameters, basic security, enable free market competition, and (with generally-few caveats) are otherwise intended to simply allow citizens to derive/preserve their own social systems, culture, families, livelihoods and support structures.
Lord Falconer please be careful what you wish for, please think about the bigger picture.
A really sensitive and emotive topic which requires dignity from both sides. Some of these comments fail to meet this criteria.
Death is the annihilation of life and no relief from suffering because you are not there when dead. Likewise death adds to suffering through the active killing of the body so Lord Falconer`s argument somewhat off centre.
What utter drivel
Totally contrary to the will of God. Assisted suicide people have no fear of God.
@@maureenelsden1927 If honouring your God means a miserable death then you're welcome to make that choice. I have no God so that is not a factor for me.
@@M896 You mean you don't fancy the Last Rites from a holy Catholic priest to help you make your peace with God, rather than sedation?
Charlie Falconer is not looking too well !
Well said ,the man with the red tie……thank you
When you've got to the state assisted suicide part of the argument, I think you can justifiably say the state has gone too far.