An Unacceptable Risk

Janet Eastham writes:

Assisted dying is sexist and will lead to women being disproportionately killed, a report has found.

The study, produced by non-partisan think tank The Other Half, found that assisted dying created an “unacceptable risk that women are coerced into state death”.

The research was led by Fiona Mackenzie, the organisation’s chief executive, who was awarded an MBE for her role in driving legislative change to stop “rough sex” claims being used as a defence in violent assaults and homicides.

Ms Mackenzie analysed UK “mercy killings” and data from countries with legal assisted dying. She warned that without safeguards to detect abuse and coercion, the law proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater risked the state “delivering domestic homicide on behalf of abusers”.

The report cited two cases in which men who killed their partners were “championed” by Dignity in Dying, despite histories of domestic violence.

In 2022, the group backed a man under police investigation for assisting his first wife’s death in the 1990s, despite him being jailed in 2017 for bludgeoning his second wife with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

Ms Mackenzie also accused the pressure group of operating a “cut-price British Dignitas” in the 1970s and 1980s.

Her research revealed that two men working for the organisation, including its general secretary, were convicted for six deaths – five involving women suffering from multiple sclerosis, depression, and cancer.

The full report will be shared with MPs on Monday ahead of Friday’s free vote Ms Leadbeater’s Bill to legalise assisted dying for the terminally ill.

Ms Mackenzie highlights concerns from jurisdictions such as Oregon, where she claims “women with anorexia, disabilities and other ‘challenging’ female conditions have been funnelled into ‘assisted’ death”, adding: “Providers of assisted death can and do coerce.”

Dignity in Dying, the pressure group behind Ms Leadbeater’s campaign, argues that the prevalence of “mercy killings” and failed suicide pacts is evidence of the need for reform the law on assisted dying, as those who kill sick partners deserve leniency.

Last year the group welcomed new Crown Prosecution Service guidance distinguishing mercy killings and suicide pacts from murder and manslaughter, saying: “Differentiating acts of compassion from serious crimes is an important milestone on the road to law change, as well as a clear indication that the blanket ban on assisted dying does not work.”

But The Other Half analysed data from 100 of these killings in the UK and found that “despite claims…‘mercy killings’ are not the wanted, ‘hastened’ deaths that need assisted dying” but instead “are overwhelmingly violent domestic homicides of women, by men: and show that our society is still poor at detecting and responding to domestic abuse”.

Of the 100 UK “mercy killings” over 25 years, the report found that 88 per cent of perpetrators were male, and 78 per cent of female victims were neither terminally ill nor willing to die but were often elderly, disabled, or infirm.

Killings were frequently triggered by care demands and involved excessive violence, with “overkill” –the use of unnecessary brutality – common.

Dignity in Dying was founded in 1935 as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. By the late 1970s the organisation also operated under the name Exit.

In October 1981, its general secretary, Labour councillor Nicholas Reed, was jailed for two and half years for three counts of aiding and abetting suicides and one of conspiracy to aid and abet.

His colleague Mark Lyons, 70, received a suspended sentence for seven charges of aiding and abetting suicides and conspiracy to aid and abet. Both had initially been investigated for 250 deaths.

‘Lesson should terrify us’ 

Ms Mackenzie said that the convictions of Mr Lyons and Mr Reed is “a lesson that should terrify us”, saying: “If you’re an organisation campaigning on this, you need to be really accepting of the reality of human nature.

“You tried to run a ‘cut-price British Dignitas’ and ended up causing the deaths of disabled women and trying to kill a woman who didn’t want to die.” 

A spokesman from Dignity in Dying said: “Dignity in Dying is a professional campaigning organisation working within the law to change the law. No one working in our organisation today was working on these issues in the 1970s or 1980s, including during Nicholas Reed’s brief leadership of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.

“We campaign for law change because we want dying people to have safeguarded choice; a reform supported by the vast majority of the British public.

“The current law fails to protect people, including women who may be experiencing domestic violence. As this report shows, currently investigations only take place after someone has died, when it is too late to help them and too late to prevent abuse or coercion.”