The VAD Bill introduced on Friday respects religious freedom by allowing conscientious objectors to decline to participate in the process of voluntary assisted dying. But it provides no replacement devil’s advocate – because how could it?Without this role, the voluntary assisted dying process could easily become an affirmative system, delivered by agreeable practitioners who share my profound belief in access to VAD and see themselves as facilitating a social good. This is not as unlikely as the bill’s authors might think.
It has happened in other areas of complex psychological and medical healthcare. Many parents report feeling that gender dysphoria counselling leads too smoothly to hormones and surgery when other options could have been explored. Similarly, the process around accessing abortion has become increasingly routinised. A strong patient-centred process must ensure that women have access to the procedure but acknowledge that, without friction in the process, some women will report avoidable post-abortion grief.
In each of these cases, the solution is not to make the medical treatment unavailable, but to acknowledge that complicated and far-reaching decisions need more than just advocates pushing them through in the name of progress.
The flaw in Greenwich’s otherwise very sound bill is the flaw in humanity itself. We think we know what we want. Lord what fools we mortals are. Sometimes we need a respectful devil’s advocate to slow us down before we slip up on our own certainty.
Source: Why I support assisted dying (but with a devil’s advocate)