“In voting for the Assisted Dying Bill, MPs have betrayed both their ignorance and indifference to the extreme vulnerability of disabled people across the UK”-Havering SEND Campaigner Hits Out.

By Ruth Kettle-Frisby – Guest Writer and Community Activist

Ruth is passionate about fostering positive change within the local community and regularly contributes insights and stories to The Havering Daily.

MPs have narrowly backed the Assisted Dying Bill in England and Wales, by just 23 votes, however disability rights campaigners will continue to fight the Bill on existential grounds.

We urge peers to listen carefully to both carers and members of the disabled community about the reasons for their urgent and impassioned objection to assisted dying. 

In voting for this Bill, MPs have betrayed both their ignorance and indifference to the extreme vulnerability of disabled people across the UK. 

Disabled people are routinely dehumanised as drains on public resources, and their basic needs routinely couched in burdensome terms. 

The debate itself is historically misrepresented as being solely religious in character, committing a fallacy of false dilemma: if it really was solely about quality of life vs sanctity, we’d back the assisted dying all the way. 

In an increasingly secular society, forcing people to experience avoidable suffering is surely misguided, whether that entails enduring preventable agony when dying, or trapping people in abusive marriages.

However, for such a bill to have any credibility at all, palliative care would need to benefit from sufficient investment to give people real choices to experience dignified end of life care; so too would policies driving health and social care inequalities need to be reformed.

Assisted dying represents the thin end of a horrifying wedge. In order for non-disabled people to act in good faith, we need to be aware that in reality, compassion afforded to terminally ill people within the perameters of this Bill can only stretch so far.

Many disabled people are feeling the palpable danger that existing disablist attitudes will be empowered further in the form of a covert reappearance of 20th Century eugenics (https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/disability-history/1914-1945). 

If this seems outlandish to you, consider the Covid 19 pandemic, which was in effect a mass disabling event. It may shock readers to learn that of all those who died during the covid pandemic, almost 60% were disabled (https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/disabled-people%E2%80%99s-organisations-slam-uk-government-pandemic-failures-over-covid#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20consequences%20of%20COVID%20touched,from%20COVID%20were%20Disabled%20people), with Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders being issued with terrifying liberalism.

Politicians must work inclusively for disabled people in our communities. This must involve lobbying for investment in – and with it, the societal elevation of – palliative care with meaningful choices for all, as well as essential health, social care and disability services for those who need them. 

We implore the House of Lords to reject the Bill, in faithful acknowledgement that the ongoing disablist, toxic culture here in the UK renders assisted dying unthinkable.

Ruth Kettle-Frisby 

On behalf of SEND Parents in Havering 

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