Thank you, a wonderful analysis which exemplifies true intellect and genuine reasoning. I am just a little surprised that nihilism is not invoked, or more loosely the idea that liberalism as you describe it is deliberately and necessarily, if unconsciously, anti-life. I can already foresee any intervention to try to dissuade a suicidal individual from carrying out the suicide being classified as a Non-Crime Hate Incident.
This made me feel melancholic, because I can see the truth in it, and the way society is going, I think society is ready for this (having been groomed for decades or even centuries). The way things like VR are increasing in popularity (well, for those easily influences by propaganda of course), makes the bizarreness of these "Pavilions of Rest" seem almost commonplace.
More recently I think the "injections" were the start of this very slippery slope. I remember several acquaintances expressing a sense of duty to be part of the "experiment" (knowing full well that was what it was, and therefore a risk) - not for themselves of course, but for others. Someone really close to me also said "well, if I die, you will carry on with your life and soon enough forget me". Both sentiments are on the slippery slope to suicide. And of course, if we absolve ourselves from any responsibility and doing it so as not to be a burden on society, well, then, the argument can only be in favour.
Is it for us to try and put a stop to this? Or is it just the next step in people's (d)evolution, so that at some point, they will hit rock bottom, wake up from the dream, return to themselves and understand the insanity of all? And therefore, just as with the injections, must we just sit back, let people be and watch this all play out?
The author seems to think that Christianity is important, but the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury promoted them as effectively being a gift from God. Says everything about what is wrong about religion.
Yet again, you’ve pin-pointed the manner in which governance cannot resist the temptation of insinuating itself into the most basic aspects of existence. And what could possibly be more basic than the wish to relinquish the sanctity of the life we were handed. We may not have been given a choice over when and where that gift was ‘to be opened’, but our ability to choose when to throw it away has always been an aspect of existence.
I’m bound to say that, should my existence become so excruciatingly hopeless, in terms of unbearable pain, I continue to retain a desire to be able to choose when to relinquish what I have always considered to be the gift of life. I hasten to add that I continue to enjoy the best of health and have no particular reason to envision the sort of end to my existence which would require me to make such a choice. The point is that it should be my choice and mine alone.
However, what I most certainly do not desire is for that choice to be influenced in any manner by the ever present tentacles of the State. As you have been at pains to highlight in many of your excellent essays, governance must always seek to persuade the governed that it has become indispensable and the ultimate in such persuasion is the creation of a system in which all/any choice is dependant upon applying the rules and regulations resulting from government legislation.
Your essay quite rightly highlights the manner in which, over time, legislation becomes subject to subjective interpretation by the legal system. Those interpretations arise, principally, from the sheer impossibility of the creation of legislation designed to cover as many of the eventualities envisioned by the those seeking to….let’s not beat around the bush…control the manner in which the governed must exist, always, of course, for the greater good. As such, unintended interpretations always lead to yet more ill considered legislation, it being the consequence of ensuring continued control and thus, indisputable necessity of continued governance !!
So, I am forced to recognise the extreme shortsightedness of having not thought through my reluctant initial support of the bill and I stand corrected, whilst continuing to hang on to my desire to exercise a thoroughly personal choice - which I hope I shall never have to make - over when and how to relinquish mine own - and surely it is mine own?!! - sanctified gift of life. The sanctity issue derives from a faith in a higher power. I long ago gave up a belief in organised religion’s definition of that higher power and have transferred that faith/belief to the power which operates the eternal universe. Essentially, it equates to the same ie that there must be a power/energy which is infinitely greater than everything we perceive and which we recognise in the form of consciousness.
I’ve been wrestling with my conflicted views in relation to this bill and am grateful to you for providing the basis for bringing the wrestling to a reasoned conclusion. If it passes, it will be yet another law that I shall ignore.
Suffering with unbearable pain should not really happen anymore with modern pain relief.
The Catholic church has very well-thought out teaching in regard to physical suffering. Both in what must be offered to you and what must be accepted by you, and why.
Yes you, as a patient near the end of your physical life should accept "ordinary" care offered to you: water, nutrition, warmth and cleaning and pain relief; but no, you do not have to accept "extra-ordinary" care or treatments or procedures to try to prolong your physical life. There is so much more to be said, but that's the basics. Catholics have a duty to accept ordinary care in all patience so that by our good example our fellow men will be called to respect the sanctity of all lives, from conception to natural death, not just our own life. Why? Because all men are tempted to perform utilitarian calculations of the quality of life for other men, are tempted for Justice to be the advantage of the stronger man between any two men, e.g. if I want your wallet, I hold you down and take it, and that is Justice. So: resist this temptation for the sake of all men. Plan to accept ordinary care. Secure an advocate for you for pain relief that does not kill you, in case of your incapacity.
It is strange to encounter an argument in modern times which is so polarised for (reasons) and against (reasons). If you are fearful of the slippery slope then you are 'against'. If you are fearful of unremitting pain because no-one is brave enough, in public, to help then you are 'for'.
And yet the true drama is the discussion about who is in control of your body. You - the individual - or the collective state. Involving 'liberalism' is a cop out as 'liberalism' is ill defined and religious liberalism absurd.
Since (in the UK) suicide and attempted suicide are not crimes (The Suicide Act 1961) we effectively acknowledge that the control of the body rests with the individual. All the remainder of the debate, particularly avoiding the slippery slope, is merely bureaucracy.
You are right to worry about the ability of the state to manage the process but the consequence is that people have their right to control their body taken away and potentially suffer unremitting pain or distress because of paperwork. And that would be true illiberalism.
It's important to remember that people have always been free to commit suicide, and have always been free to help each other do so. The question is whether there are legal consequences to doing so, and what those consequences are. Control over one's body remains, either way.
I feel one of those quadrant diagrams coming on. Two axes... one free/not free, the other able/not able.
Is a devout Roman Catholic to be found in the not free/able quadrant?
A prisoner on suicide watch in the not free/not able quadrant.
A terminally ill immobile patient in the free/not able quadrant
The mobile unsupervised may be in the free/able quadrant, although their means may be tricky.
Really the argument is not about suicide itself but the legality of the 'Assistance'. It would seem that avoiding the slippery slope might well require a very careful definition of who might provide such assistance, the methods available, and the records kept.
There's no need for conjecture. In Canada doctors already suggest suicide to patients (illegal) and in five years the system is already pushing to expand to those who are merely Depressed. Iirc in the Netherlands a woman took this route at 29 years of age - for merely being sad.
‘The final unmooring of liberalism from religious constraint.’ Indeed. Brilliantly put. We have created hell on Earth. I note that distinctly dodgy looking ‘professor’ A.C. Grayling is one of the patrons for Dignity in Dying - who would have guessed?
I have been meaning to look up ‘Uncibal’ for months and now I don’t have to - thanks!
Thank you for clarifying my gut feeling about some of the reasons this is awful and will unleash unknown unknowns.
I notice time and time again, this era is defined by 1st Order Effects.
Nary a word is spoken of unintended consequences or 2nd, 3rd, 4th Order Effects.
Possibly beyond the scope of the pea-brained who now occupy the halls of power.
I hold out little hope the collusion of Law and Therapy will come together to decide that those with ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’ or ‘Dangerous’ anti-j*b views obviously must go on this pathway.
So much of this death cult seems to be based on Comfort and Convenience Worship.
Yes - there's a kind of unwillingness to think about unintended consequences. There's this weirdly naive idea that basically everybody is a lovely person deep down inside and would never dream of e.g. pressuring an elderly relative.
The slope could descend farther than you have described. We could eventually be nudged, incentivized, and finally coerced into "assisted dying" After all it's selfish for ordinary people to live after retirement using up housing, healthcare, food, energy, and services. Don't we care about the planet?
Excellent - much better than any opinion pieces I've read in the MSM by all those eminent columnists!
Two points - firstly this one: "Johnny, the unemployed man who sees no point in going on" has been and is happening already, male suicide rates have been far higher than those for women, only nobody really cares.
Secondly, I would be not so certain about a coming 'post-religious age'! In view of the demographic development, I rather see a post-Christianity, post-atheist age where Sharia Law reigns. So far, those who scream about not wanting 'religion stuffed down their throats' (while stuffing their atheism down anybody's throat) have got away with bemoaning in public that the Justice Minister's vote was 'influenced' by her religion - she is a Muslim. This is certain to be changed, just as the look of our public spaces in certain cities has already changed.
A slippery slope it is indeed and anyone who recalls the original Bill legalising abortion and compares it to the current state ought to be aware of how such slopes develop.
To your final point it is worth remembering that, although the time limit for abortions has reduced 28 to 24 weeks, in other respects the 1967 law hasn’t changed. It is supposed to provide abortion only where there is a significant risk to the physical or mental health of the mother, which Parliament was told would amount to about 6,000 cases per annum. Yet today, despite the law being the same, we have abortion on demand with 1 in 3 pregnancies so ended. What this shows is that any safeguarding clauses are in practice worthless if a conspiracy of doctors and the judiciary are minded to ignore them. The intention in 1967 was to use the law to push the door ajar so that it could later be kicked down. The position in 2024 will be the same with all the ensuing scenarios that David describes.
I cannot understand where the idea that a member of a family can become a burden at any time of their life. I would not want to be a member of such a family. If I did encounter it, my first action would be to make sure they knew they were excluded from my will.
I don't have any family now but I supported them fully to the end. I wonder whether I did the right thing by doing everything possible to keep them alive. Every time I looked into their eyes there was no life to see. I don't want to end up in a care home with no quality of life and I will take my own life to prevent it, as long as I am at home to do it. My biggest fear is collapsing on the street and ending up not being allowed to return home. But I think that I should have the right to end my life at any time with dignity. What has it got to do with anybody else?
The problem you describe is created by socialism and the welfare state. People have now given up responsibility for most aspects of life and handed it to the state - from care of children, education of children, health care, care of the elderly. This distorts all economic decisions and the taxes of other people allow spending on cars, holidays, technology, entertainment. The list is endless. This is what socialists want and many have rolled over to have their tummy tickled.
We should live in a society governed by reason and intellect but socialism and all collective ideologies such as religion are based on subjective views and what we feel is right. We are getting what the majority want and there is no reason in sight.
Soylent Green is at the bottom of that slippery slope for sure. How can it be otherwise because if there is no sanctity of life, there is no context in which there can be any defence against expediency and utilitarianism - human life, with no spiritual dimension, is as valuable as a cow expelling methane in a field.
I am coming to the realisation that I find living in a world where a majority of people have abandoned the idea of the sanctity of human life, extremely frightening. I always thought that most people thought this. I'm a lifelong vegetarian and so I believe in the sanctity of all life, not just humans. I have long come to terms with the fact that most people look at lambs and think of dinner, and that the slaughterhouse is not a nightmarish horror show for them. I accept that my offence at the sight of bloody bits of flesh in the supermarket cannot be registered as a non crime hate incident. However, I always thought that human life was in a different category for most people. Pretty depressing to find that it is not.
It's inchoate at the moment. I think most people, if you asked them, would say they believe in the sanctity of life. But when you get down to brass tacks the commitment seems to dissipate. It won't be long before people become more conscious of this.
Yes indeed, talk is cheap and self-delusion rampant. It was like the whole covid fiasco - no-one was complying with the ridiculous rules and getting jabbed to 'save granny'. It was to save their own sorry selves, but it was dressed up as altruism. I wonder if missionary doctors like Albert Schweizer and his wife exist any more, driven as they were by a strong religious conviction and belief in the sanctity of life. I honestly feel like we are on the way back down the road to human sacrifice to propitiate the weather gods.
If the government were thinking properly, they would find some excuse to ban such adverts.
Managerial government requires a basic level of agreeableness among the populace. The more agreeable you are, the more likely an advert may convince you to end it all.
In general, it is the most disagreeable who are more likely to end it all. If the most agreeable choose to join them, that could tip the scales to interesting effect.
I guess all we can say is that "there is always hope".
As regards the mundane, grubby and disgusting Bill that inspired this article however, let's not assume it will be passed.
It has Committee Stage next, during which all the depraved and dirty details of it will be exposed and scrutinised. And after that it has a Third Reading debate and vote, very likely to be as controversial and hard-fought as the Second was.
After that, it goes to the Lords. Opposition there is very likely to be even greater than in the Commons. After all, many members of the Lords are politicians from the previous generations who stood head and shoulders above the useless cohort in today's Commons, and who always rejected Murder-with-Consent when it was presented to them in the past.
If the Lord's reject the Bill, it will go back to the Commons. At that point it will almost certainly itself die, as the government is not exactly going to take it up, let alone use the Parliament Act to force it through against Lords opposition.
The morally bankrupt and evil people who are pushing this Bill have only until the end of the parliamentary session (not the parliament itself) to make it law. The odds are against them, and we should earnestly pray that they will not be lucky.
Thank you, a wonderful analysis which exemplifies true intellect and genuine reasoning. I am just a little surprised that nihilism is not invoked, or more loosely the idea that liberalism as you describe it is deliberately and necessarily, if unconsciously, anti-life. I can already foresee any intervention to try to dissuade a suicidal individual from carrying out the suicide being classified as a Non-Crime Hate Incident.
Yeah, you’re not kidding about the NCHI…..
Or it would be deemed to be conversion therapy and caught by the “comprehensive ban” on such egregious practice that Ms Dodds is determined to impose.
This made me feel melancholic, because I can see the truth in it, and the way society is going, I think society is ready for this (having been groomed for decades or even centuries). The way things like VR are increasing in popularity (well, for those easily influences by propaganda of course), makes the bizarreness of these "Pavilions of Rest" seem almost commonplace.
More recently I think the "injections" were the start of this very slippery slope. I remember several acquaintances expressing a sense of duty to be part of the "experiment" (knowing full well that was what it was, and therefore a risk) - not for themselves of course, but for others. Someone really close to me also said "well, if I die, you will carry on with your life and soon enough forget me". Both sentiments are on the slippery slope to suicide. And of course, if we absolve ourselves from any responsibility and doing it so as not to be a burden on society, well, then, the argument can only be in favour.
Is it for us to try and put a stop to this? Or is it just the next step in people's (d)evolution, so that at some point, they will hit rock bottom, wake up from the dream, return to themselves and understand the insanity of all? And therefore, just as with the injections, must we just sit back, let people be and watch this all play out?
The author seems to think that Christianity is important, but the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury promoted them as effectively being a gift from God. Says everything about what is wrong about religion.
David, thanks.
Yet again, you’ve pin-pointed the manner in which governance cannot resist the temptation of insinuating itself into the most basic aspects of existence. And what could possibly be more basic than the wish to relinquish the sanctity of the life we were handed. We may not have been given a choice over when and where that gift was ‘to be opened’, but our ability to choose when to throw it away has always been an aspect of existence.
I’m bound to say that, should my existence become so excruciatingly hopeless, in terms of unbearable pain, I continue to retain a desire to be able to choose when to relinquish what I have always considered to be the gift of life. I hasten to add that I continue to enjoy the best of health and have no particular reason to envision the sort of end to my existence which would require me to make such a choice. The point is that it should be my choice and mine alone.
However, what I most certainly do not desire is for that choice to be influenced in any manner by the ever present tentacles of the State. As you have been at pains to highlight in many of your excellent essays, governance must always seek to persuade the governed that it has become indispensable and the ultimate in such persuasion is the creation of a system in which all/any choice is dependant upon applying the rules and regulations resulting from government legislation.
Your essay quite rightly highlights the manner in which, over time, legislation becomes subject to subjective interpretation by the legal system. Those interpretations arise, principally, from the sheer impossibility of the creation of legislation designed to cover as many of the eventualities envisioned by the those seeking to….let’s not beat around the bush…control the manner in which the governed must exist, always, of course, for the greater good. As such, unintended interpretations always lead to yet more ill considered legislation, it being the consequence of ensuring continued control and thus, indisputable necessity of continued governance !!
So, I am forced to recognise the extreme shortsightedness of having not thought through my reluctant initial support of the bill and I stand corrected, whilst continuing to hang on to my desire to exercise a thoroughly personal choice - which I hope I shall never have to make - over when and how to relinquish mine own - and surely it is mine own?!! - sanctified gift of life. The sanctity issue derives from a faith in a higher power. I long ago gave up a belief in organised religion’s definition of that higher power and have transferred that faith/belief to the power which operates the eternal universe. Essentially, it equates to the same ie that there must be a power/energy which is infinitely greater than everything we perceive and which we recognise in the form of consciousness.
I’ve been wrestling with my conflicted views in relation to this bill and am grateful to you for providing the basis for bringing the wrestling to a reasoned conclusion. If it passes, it will be yet another law that I shall ignore.
Suffering with unbearable pain should not really happen anymore with modern pain relief.
The Catholic church has very well-thought out teaching in regard to physical suffering. Both in what must be offered to you and what must be accepted by you, and why.
Yes you, as a patient near the end of your physical life should accept "ordinary" care offered to you: water, nutrition, warmth and cleaning and pain relief; but no, you do not have to accept "extra-ordinary" care or treatments or procedures to try to prolong your physical life. There is so much more to be said, but that's the basics. Catholics have a duty to accept ordinary care in all patience so that by our good example our fellow men will be called to respect the sanctity of all lives, from conception to natural death, not just our own life. Why? Because all men are tempted to perform utilitarian calculations of the quality of life for other men, are tempted for Justice to be the advantage of the stronger man between any two men, e.g. if I want your wallet, I hold you down and take it, and that is Justice. So: resist this temptation for the sake of all men. Plan to accept ordinary care. Secure an advocate for you for pain relief that does not kill you, in case of your incapacity.
It is strange to encounter an argument in modern times which is so polarised for (reasons) and against (reasons). If you are fearful of the slippery slope then you are 'against'. If you are fearful of unremitting pain because no-one is brave enough, in public, to help then you are 'for'.
And yet the true drama is the discussion about who is in control of your body. You - the individual - or the collective state. Involving 'liberalism' is a cop out as 'liberalism' is ill defined and religious liberalism absurd.
Since (in the UK) suicide and attempted suicide are not crimes (The Suicide Act 1961) we effectively acknowledge that the control of the body rests with the individual. All the remainder of the debate, particularly avoiding the slippery slope, is merely bureaucracy.
You are right to worry about the ability of the state to manage the process but the consequence is that people have their right to control their body taken away and potentially suffer unremitting pain or distress because of paperwork. And that would be true illiberalism.
It's important to remember that people have always been free to commit suicide, and have always been free to help each other do so. The question is whether there are legal consequences to doing so, and what those consequences are. Control over one's body remains, either way.
I feel one of those quadrant diagrams coming on. Two axes... one free/not free, the other able/not able.
Is a devout Roman Catholic to be found in the not free/able quadrant?
A prisoner on suicide watch in the not free/not able quadrant.
A terminally ill immobile patient in the free/not able quadrant
The mobile unsupervised may be in the free/able quadrant, although their means may be tricky.
Really the argument is not about suicide itself but the legality of the 'Assistance'. It would seem that avoiding the slippery slope might well require a very careful definition of who might provide such assistance, the methods available, and the records kept.
I support your view.
There's no need for conjecture. In Canada doctors already suggest suicide to patients (illegal) and in five years the system is already pushing to expand to those who are merely Depressed. Iirc in the Netherlands a woman took this route at 29 years of age - for merely being sad.
This slippery slope is a cliff.
‘The final unmooring of liberalism from religious constraint.’ Indeed. Brilliantly put. We have created hell on Earth. I note that distinctly dodgy looking ‘professor’ A.C. Grayling is one of the patrons for Dignity in Dying - who would have guessed?
I have been meaning to look up ‘Uncibal’ for months and now I don’t have to - thanks!
Read Grayling's Wikipedia entry. Its illuminating.
Thank you for clarifying my gut feeling about some of the reasons this is awful and will unleash unknown unknowns.
I notice time and time again, this era is defined by 1st Order Effects.
Nary a word is spoken of unintended consequences or 2nd, 3rd, 4th Order Effects.
Possibly beyond the scope of the pea-brained who now occupy the halls of power.
I hold out little hope the collusion of Law and Therapy will come together to decide that those with ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’ or ‘Dangerous’ anti-j*b views obviously must go on this pathway.
So much of this death cult seems to be based on Comfort and Convenience Worship.
Yes - there's a kind of unwillingness to think about unintended consequences. There's this weirdly naive idea that basically everybody is a lovely person deep down inside and would never dream of e.g. pressuring an elderly relative.
The slope could descend farther than you have described. We could eventually be nudged, incentivized, and finally coerced into "assisted dying" After all it's selfish for ordinary people to live after retirement using up housing, healthcare, food, energy, and services. Don't we care about the planet?
Excellent - much better than any opinion pieces I've read in the MSM by all those eminent columnists!
Two points - firstly this one: "Johnny, the unemployed man who sees no point in going on" has been and is happening already, male suicide rates have been far higher than those for women, only nobody really cares.
Secondly, I would be not so certain about a coming 'post-religious age'! In view of the demographic development, I rather see a post-Christianity, post-atheist age where Sharia Law reigns. So far, those who scream about not wanting 'religion stuffed down their throats' (while stuffing their atheism down anybody's throat) have got away with bemoaning in public that the Justice Minister's vote was 'influenced' by her religion - she is a Muslim. This is certain to be changed, just as the look of our public spaces in certain cities has already changed.
A slippery slope it is indeed and anyone who recalls the original Bill legalising abortion and compares it to the current state ought to be aware of how such slopes develop.
To your final point it is worth remembering that, although the time limit for abortions has reduced 28 to 24 weeks, in other respects the 1967 law hasn’t changed. It is supposed to provide abortion only where there is a significant risk to the physical or mental health of the mother, which Parliament was told would amount to about 6,000 cases per annum. Yet today, despite the law being the same, we have abortion on demand with 1 in 3 pregnancies so ended. What this shows is that any safeguarding clauses are in practice worthless if a conspiracy of doctors and the judiciary are minded to ignore them. The intention in 1967 was to use the law to push the door ajar so that it could later be kicked down. The position in 2024 will be the same with all the ensuing scenarios that David describes.
I think suicide is haram within Islam - not that cultural muslims, nor cultural Christians will find their consciences troubled.
I cannot understand where the idea that a member of a family can become a burden at any time of their life. I would not want to be a member of such a family. If I did encounter it, my first action would be to make sure they knew they were excluded from my will.
I don't have any family now but I supported them fully to the end. I wonder whether I did the right thing by doing everything possible to keep them alive. Every time I looked into their eyes there was no life to see. I don't want to end up in a care home with no quality of life and I will take my own life to prevent it, as long as I am at home to do it. My biggest fear is collapsing on the street and ending up not being allowed to return home. But I think that I should have the right to end my life at any time with dignity. What has it got to do with anybody else?
The problem you describe is created by socialism and the welfare state. People have now given up responsibility for most aspects of life and handed it to the state - from care of children, education of children, health care, care of the elderly. This distorts all economic decisions and the taxes of other people allow spending on cars, holidays, technology, entertainment. The list is endless. This is what socialists want and many have rolled over to have their tummy tickled.
We should live in a society governed by reason and intellect but socialism and all collective ideologies such as religion are based on subjective views and what we feel is right. We are getting what the majority want and there is no reason in sight.
Soylent Green is at the bottom of that slippery slope for sure. How can it be otherwise because if there is no sanctity of life, there is no context in which there can be any defence against expediency and utilitarianism - human life, with no spiritual dimension, is as valuable as a cow expelling methane in a field.
That was definitely Vance’s point - also indirectly Foucault’s as well.
I am coming to the realisation that I find living in a world where a majority of people have abandoned the idea of the sanctity of human life, extremely frightening. I always thought that most people thought this. I'm a lifelong vegetarian and so I believe in the sanctity of all life, not just humans. I have long come to terms with the fact that most people look at lambs and think of dinner, and that the slaughterhouse is not a nightmarish horror show for them. I accept that my offence at the sight of bloody bits of flesh in the supermarket cannot be registered as a non crime hate incident. However, I always thought that human life was in a different category for most people. Pretty depressing to find that it is not.
It's inchoate at the moment. I think most people, if you asked them, would say they believe in the sanctity of life. But when you get down to brass tacks the commitment seems to dissipate. It won't be long before people become more conscious of this.
If people and the church especially believed in the sanctity of life there would be no wars.
Yes indeed, talk is cheap and self-delusion rampant. It was like the whole covid fiasco - no-one was complying with the ridiculous rules and getting jabbed to 'save granny'. It was to save their own sorry selves, but it was dressed up as altruism. I wonder if missionary doctors like Albert Schweizer and his wife exist any more, driven as they were by a strong religious conviction and belief in the sanctity of life. I honestly feel like we are on the way back down the road to human sacrifice to propitiate the weather gods.
If the government were thinking properly, they would find some excuse to ban such adverts.
Managerial government requires a basic level of agreeableness among the populace. The more agreeable you are, the more likely an advert may convince you to end it all.
In general, it is the most disagreeable who are more likely to end it all. If the most agreeable choose to join them, that could tip the scales to interesting effect.
Wow. Totally compelling analysis, David.
I guess all we can say is that "there is always hope".
As regards the mundane, grubby and disgusting Bill that inspired this article however, let's not assume it will be passed.
It has Committee Stage next, during which all the depraved and dirty details of it will be exposed and scrutinised. And after that it has a Third Reading debate and vote, very likely to be as controversial and hard-fought as the Second was.
After that, it goes to the Lords. Opposition there is very likely to be even greater than in the Commons. After all, many members of the Lords are politicians from the previous generations who stood head and shoulders above the useless cohort in today's Commons, and who always rejected Murder-with-Consent when it was presented to them in the past.
If the Lord's reject the Bill, it will go back to the Commons. At that point it will almost certainly itself die, as the government is not exactly going to take it up, let alone use the Parliament Act to force it through against Lords opposition.
The morally bankrupt and evil people who are pushing this Bill have only until the end of the parliamentary session (not the parliament itself) to make it law. The odds are against them, and we should earnestly pray that they will not be lucky.