Ahead of the first stage of voting on a bill to legalise assisted dying in the UK, AFP speaks to both sides of the debate. Palliative care consultant Amy Proffitt opposes the "practicalities" of the bill, saying that she "as a doctor, cannot determine coercion -- I have no legal training whatsoever." Anil Douglas, on the other hand, whose father secretly took his own life, believes that "if the bill had been in place when my father died, he could have had a much safer, kinder, more compassionate death".
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00:00And it was a beautiful house, there was a playing field right opposite, where I used
00:21to run around and kick a ball, and I have a lot of happy memories.
00:26If the bill had been in place when my father died, he could have had a much safer, kinder,
00:33more compassionate death, certainly. He could have discussed his decision with his family
00:41members, instead of making a decision that was dangerous, unsafe and isolating by himself.
00:48And his death would have been something that we could have processed emotionally and psychologically
00:57together, rather than have to deal with what was a car crash of a death.
01:04The proposed legislation would assess coercion up front, rather than the police having to
01:11sift through the wreckage of someone's death after the fact.
01:16So, while I completely understand that a bill of this magnitude needs to be scrutinised
01:25and the detail really examined carefully, the scaremongering and what-about-ery on the
01:34opponent's side, I think really is to a degree distracting from the main issues.
01:43It says in the bill that we must ensure that this is voluntary. But I, as a doctor, cannot
02:05determine coercion. I have no legal training whatsoever. I am not a lawyer or a solicitor.
02:11And in the short time in which doctors would assess someone, we couldn't possibly determine
02:16whether this was voluntary or not. I think my biggest fear, there is some pessimism,
02:21and that's because this has been rushed through. We have a brand new government with
02:25a lot of new MPs that are just getting used to their job and representing their constituency.
02:30We've had less than three weeks to examine the content of the bill, with no exploration
02:35of actually the consequences of it. And there are consequences, including opening the door
02:40to euthanasia.
02:42We do sit down and very carefully explore the reasons that they're feeling like that.