Mary Kenny
Next week, on October 16, the British parliament will once again debate ‘assisted dying’, following a private member’s bill to be introduced by Kim Leadbeater. Ms Leadbeater is the younger sister of the murdered MP Jo Cox – who was killed by a right-wing extremist in 2016 – and stepped forward to succeed her sister as a Labour member of parliament.
Government is supposed to remain neutral during the introduction of a private member’s bill, in which members are free to vote with their conscience. But Sir Keir Starmer has also indicated his favourable view of “the right to die”, as it is called, as has a senior Labour minister, Ed Miliband.
It’s likely that legislation will also be proposed in Ireland, since a joint parliamentary committee recommended this course back in the spring (although an election may intervene.) But it’s worth watching what happens in the UK next week, as the outcome may well affect Northern Ireland.
The public debate so far has been reasonably open and fair. There is, among the general public, support for legalising dying – one recent poll put it at 75% – although this is contested by other polls, in which a majority express concern about safety issues. The influential television personality, Esther Rantzen, who has terminal lung cancer (by the way, Esther never smoked) has had huge backing for her pro-euthanasia campaign. Starmer even said that he wished to honour a promise to Esther to see the issue debated in parliament – which prompts the question as to whether governments should form policy on the say-so of a popular TV celebrity?
And despite Dame Esther’s following, there are many conscientious voices which oppose the measure – and point to the way in which this has proved a “slippery slope” in so many other legislatures, from Canada to Belgium.
And another very significant factor has emerged: the spectral influence of the late Dr Harold Shipman. Shipman, who died in 2004, is known as the most prolific serial killer in British history – he polished off at least 284 of his victims by deliberately administering lethal overdoses. After these crimes came to light, doctors were subjected to new draconian rules about how much morphine, or other painkillers, they could carry and prescribe.
It is well-established that physicians tending a patient on the path to dying quite honourably used morphine to curb pain – but which sometimes hastened death. This was accepted, as we know, by the Catholic church, as the “double effect”: the intention was to relieve suffering, even if death followed. But after Shipman, medics were no longer trusted. And so, people who have watched loved-ones suffer from lack of pain relief may now be inclined to call for assisted dying.
As I have mentioned previously, even in America, when my sister was in the last days of her life, I had to beg the hospice for sufficient morphine – the authorities were so terrified of being accused of manslaughter charges, or of causing “addiction” in a patient.
The Shipman factor has surely played a role in the rise of euthanasia demand, as well as other influences from a utilitarian and secularised society: the costs of maintaining the elderly and frail and the mistaken idea that we have ‘autonomy’ over every aspect of our bodies.
It would be indeed darkly ironic if one killing doctor – Shipman – turned out to be the cause of enabling all doctors to directly kill.
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The late Mary O’Rourke, who died recently aged 87, was a well-liked politician – approachable and gregarious. She was known as part of the Athlone Lenihan political dynasty, daughter of TD Paddy, sister of Brian Lenihan Senior and aunt of the Brian Junior, and of Conor Lenihan. She wrote a genial memoir ‘Just Mary’, which was very touching about becoming a mother to her two sons: one, Feargal, was her biological child, and one Aongus, was adopted. She wrote that she loved them both equally.
The “black sheep” in the Lenihan family was her uncle Joseph, whose life included being parachuted into Ireland as a German spy, and becoming a failed double agent for British Intelligence. He had also served a jail sentence for smuggling, fought against the Japanese in China, and was a potato digger in Jersey in 1940. Mary understandably omitted her Uncle Joe from her memoir, though his life does sound quite a yarn.
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The Reformation meant that women were increasingly sidelined, according to a new academic book (Women and the Reformation: A Global History, by Merry Wiesner-Hanks). From the 14th to the 18th century, under Catholic rule, at least thirty women had exercised sovereign authority in Europe.
Five Catholic women were executed for opposing Henry VIII’s policies in England: Elizabeth Barton (a nun), Margaret Pole, Margaret Cheyne, Elizabeth Wood and Mabel Brigge. Henry certainly practised “patriarchy” at its most extreme.