Prior to the House of Commons voting to legalize “assisted dying” for patients in Wales and England, citizens were already showing a concern that they might be coerced into assisted suicide. Currently, the vote in the House of Commons applies to patients who are terminally ill and have less than six months to live. Prior to the vote, assisted dying was outlawed and could result in 14 years imprisonment. The measure still needs to be passed by both chambers of Parliament to become law.

Focaldata conducted the survey on behalf of The Care Not Killing coalition prior to the vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Initially, 73 percent of the 5,000 adult respondents supported a change to the law that banned assisted suicide. However, after being presented with 10 arguments against the newly proposed measure, most changed their mind. The study also found that many respondents initially believed that assisted dying would still include such measures as hospice care and “life-prolonging treatment.” Seventy percent also agreed with the statement, “Before parliament considers introducing assisted dying, there should be a Royal Commission to examine the future of palliative and end of life care.” Fifty-nine percent agreed that it was “impossible to create safeguards that would always prevent people from being coerced into assisted dying.” Fifty-eight percent also believed that more vulnerable populations such as the elderly or disabled could be coerced into choosing assisted suicide. The UK’s national health system, the NHS, had struggled to maintain the population prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and is continuing to feel stretched well afterward with increased wait times and difficulties receiving preventative care. Some respondents felt these stresses might cause the NHS to push more for assisted death simply for its lower cost over palliative care.

Dr. Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, stated the survey showed that citizens’ main concern was for better care, not for better killing. “This major new poll blows apart the arguments so often advanced by advocates of state-assisted killing that the public backs changing the law. But this support is based on a superficial question that relies on the public’s understandable lack of knowledge about what happens in the small number of countries that have legalized assisted suicide or euthanasia.” He also noted the slippery slope that such laws can devolve into, including countries that have expanded their assisted death laws to permit children younger than 12 to elect death. Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), while still only applying to adults, has expanded to include people who “experience unbearable physical or mental suffering from your illness, disease, disability or state of decline that cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable.” Such an expanded definition has worried disability and mental health advocates that such policies will pull the focus away from treatment and lead people to choose assisted suicide. The person does not have to have a terminal condition to apply either. Ross Hendry, the CEO of Christian Action Research, reacting to the passage of the bill in the House of Commons, pushed back against it. “Legalizing assisted suicide would diminish the value we ascribe to human life in our legislation and our institutions and create a two-tier society where suicide prevention doesn’t extend to all people,” he said. “This would be a moral failure, and a huge step backwards.”