Pressure and Coercion – Care Not Killing Scotland

Pressure and Coercion

Key Points

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No-one should be pressured to end their life.

But pressure and coercion can be subtle or overt

Internal pressure – feeling a burden.

External pressure – elder abuse, financial abuse.

Systemic pressure – healthcare professionals and institutions.

Many will choose it because they don’t want to be a burden on others, or on the NHS.

More than half of all the people who had an assisted suicide in Oregon between 2018 and 2022 (53% over 5 years) cited ‘feeling a burden on family, friends and caregivers’ as one of their reasons for ending their lives.

Many will feel pressured to choose it by isolation and loneliness.

Over two thousand, two hundred people in 2022 cited ‘isolation and loneliness’ as a reason for their death under Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying system.

Many people will be forced into assisted suicide because they can’t access or afford the social care they need when they can no longer look after themselves.

Many may worry about the financial burden of continuing care, or about eroding the inheritance they will leave their loved ones.

People’s families may put pressure on them, deliberately or unintentionally, which can influence the choice to have an assisted suicide death.

This is where issues like coercive control, elder abuse (financial or psychological) and neglect play a significant role. No system of safeguards can prevent it happening.

Many will look at the state of the NHS – long waiting lists, staff shortages, budget cuts – and be influenced by the lack of care available to them.

The prospect of a long wait with inadequate care -vs- the promise of a quick death creates a structural coercion that pushes people into a position where they feel they have no other option.

The Health Secretary himself worries about coercion not giving people a real choice.

“I do not think that palliative care, end-of-life care in this country is in a condition yet where we are giving people the freedom to choose without being coerced by the lack of support available.”

WES STREETING, MP. Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

Read Next :

Promoting Care, Opposing Euthanasia

Care Not Killing was set up in 2006 as an alliance of individuals and organisations which brings together disability and human rights groups, healthcare providers, and faith-based bodies, with the aims of promoting more and better palliative care; ensuring that existing laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are not weakened or repealed; and helping the public to understand the consequences of any further weakening of the law.

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