Euthanasia: Taking the Easy Way Out – the decisiveness of the Swiss leaves Britain free to remain neutral

Daniel James had a white solution poured into his mouth. He was asleep within minutes; a camera was catching it all.

Eighteen months earlier his neck had twisted in a collapsed scrum: the force of the scrum had twisted his neck severing his spinal chord. He had played for the English Universities’ rugby team only four days before. Eighteen months on from that scrum and he was lying dead in a clinic in Switzerland. Life is a tough old sod, eh.

Big tragic cases crop up every now and again. They bring the issue back into our living rooms. The lad was depressed: his life was shattered, he couldn’t move, he went from sportsman to tetraplegic in a single movement. He wanted out. You can hardly blame the guy. I can hardly say that I wouldn’t be the same.

You see, where once he would have had to tough out a life that he didn’t want to live, today because of legal euthanasia in Switzerland, with minimal pain and surrounded by the people he loved, he did exactly as he wanted to do.

Daniel James passed away on 12th September, 2008. It was an informed decision that he made about his life. He checked out of the big hotel of life on his own terms, he paid the bill with his own card, he walked through the big swing doors as he wanted to: his life, his decision.

In recent years the euthanasia debate has receded. The goal posts have shifted. You see, if somebody wishes to die we simply cannot stop them boarding a plane to Switzerland. We just cannot touch them.

Today the debate instead centres on those who fly out and assist the suicide: should or shouldn’t they be prosecuted under our laws? In terms of raw legislation the answer is yes – yes, they are culpable in another person’s death – but the law is slightly more complex than just raw legislation.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has in recent years shunned prosecution. Judges use their discretion to issue sentences, sentencing guidelines issued by the government do not require custodial terms, and more and more the CPS is choosing not to prosecute at all. Every time the CPS doesn’t prosecute, or a judge issues no sentence they are setting precedent and moving the legal goal posts.

The debate has not only moved on, but in recent years it has faded even as a debate at all. It seems that with each new tragic case that we do not prosecute or in which we do not sentence we are moving more and more towards a compromise of ‘sorts’: we are sort-of allowing people to go abroad, and to sort-of legally do as they wish, even to sort-of legally assist relatives – but we are not allowing it on our own soil. So they still can sort-of do it, but we still sort-of don’t facilitate it. We kind-of don’t condone it. If you get what I’m sort-of saying.

As a middle way it seems to have appeased those on both sides of the argument. The anti-euthanasia camp still do not have euthanasia on our soil and still haven’t had their fears – of vulnerable people being pushed into signing away their lives – realised. And then the legalisation camp see that those in the direst need do not have to tough out years of pain, that for those like Daniel James there is another way. With such a divisive issue, to have calmed even the moderates on both side of the spectrum, as this has, is a huge achievement by what is really just an accidental solution.

In terms of the monumental change that would be legalising euthanasia outright, well, we’ll leave those big brash statements to the Swiss. We have done it our way.

Daniel James’s parents were unwitting pioneers: to face interrogation and questioning whilst in mourning is, I’d imagine, hardly pleasant. I hope they can take solace in knowing their bravery will help others in similar situations.

A difficult and vexing issue for many years, now the euthanasia debate has receded. Daniel James and others are tragedies; but it is my opinion that to force them to live on against their will would have been a greater tragedy. It also is my opinion that we have ourselves a beautiful solution. I call it the Swiss solution.