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COMMENT: No easy answer in life debate

MPs will have to think very carefully about a proposed bill to allow assisted dying.

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Life is sacred and it is precious.

Even so, hundreds of terminally ill people in Britain every year decide to end their time on Earth by their own hand to spare themselves the pain of their deteriorating health.

No-one is permitted to help them, not even qualified doctors who could spare them further suffering and give them dignity in their final hours.

There is no easy response, no suitable way to address this most fundamental of issues that will not spark furious debate on either side.

For while at the heart of this matter are individuals who stand to be given power over their own destiny, the issue goes beyond them to society as a whole.

Proposed by Wolverhampton South West MP Rob Marris are safeguards that restrict the decision to two doctors, independent of one another, signed off by a judge.

But there will inevitably be questions of possible coercion, of whether someone contemplating dying by their own hand is of sound mind and of what burden is placed on the professionals, particularly those who have always worked to preserve and prolong life, not to end it.

Equally there are many with the deeply held religious belief that no individual should ever choose their time to die.

As a qualified lawyer, Mr Marris is perhaps one of the best placed in the Commons to lead this debate.

He and his fellow MPs will have to consider very carefully the potential consequences of what is being proposed.

It is a debate that must be had and needs to be settled, if only to give absolute clarity of the law to the terminally ill and those who love them.

It would be all too easy for prosecutors to simply be told to turn a blind eye, for the police to be instructed behind closed doors not to pursue those they believe to have acted in accordance with the wishes of someone suffering.

But that is not democracy in action.

It is not for public servants to water down the law. They should be able to apply it wherever it stands.

If society is ready to accept assisted dying, then it must be brought out from behind closed doors.

If it is not, then let the objections be made and heard.

Dignity, whether in life or death, cannot be delivered when there is doubt.

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