Assisted suicide: Mass shoe protest

Hundreds of shoes were placed outside Parliament, as a representation of lives that would be lost to assisted suicide if the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is made law.

The government's impact assessment of Kim Leadbeater's bill estimates that between 164 and 647 people will have assisted deaths in the first year after legalisation, rising quickly thereafter. This is based on the percentages of deaths in jurisdictions with comparable eligibility criteria for allowing assisted suicide.

Kim Leadbeater has suggested that her bill would result in up to 3 per cent of deaths being by assisted suicide, which would equate to up to 17,000 deaths in England and Wales per year.

"The reality is that no one can be sure how many people in England and Wales would use assisted suicide," campaign group Christian Concern says. "The visual demonstration [displayed] the sombre reality that we will not be able to get back our family, friends and colleagues who take their lives by assisted suicide."

Christian Concern added: "None of us know just how much life we have left, and many people outlive pessimistic prognoses.

"[The] demonstration, led by Storm Cecile, [saw] hundreds of pairs of shoes [laid out] along the pavement outside Parliament, as a representative of the projected number of lives that will be lost each year by assisted suicide."

Cecile cares for her father, Cecil Harper (64), who was diagnosed with cancer in 2019 and told he might have two to three years to live. Harper is still alive today, and spoke to the media outside Parliament earlier this month about why he is against this bill. Speaking prior to the protest, Cecile said: "The creative demonstration is a visual representation of all the people we will lose each year to the assisted dying bill. We hope that by showing this, it will humanise the people that we will lose to the bill. 

"We hope that in showing people the hundreds and hundreds of shoes, people will recognise the scale and the value of the human lives being taken.

"My dad being terminally ill with prostate cancer which has spread to the bone has been challenging for us all as a family. He was given two years to live in 2019, but has been living for over six. I am a carer for my dad and deeply desire the best for him. While caring takes a large amount of time, money and resources; I recognise that caring for my dad is a gift and every moment is precious. I cannot mentally even bring myself to think that it would be better if he wasn’t here.

"Love looks after people. It sacrifices time and is something we all may carry at one point or another. The solution is not to offer suicide, but to provide better healthcare, better palliative solutions and to have better support for carers."

Again, speaking prior to the protest, Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of Christian Concern, said: “This bill opens up the option of suicide to anyone who has been given six months or less to live. But many patients outlive doctors' expectations, sometimes by years. The fact is that not even doctors can reliably predict how long someone has left to live.

"A terminal diagnosis is not the end of the story. But Kim Leadbeater's bill would nudge many vulnerable people towards seeing suicide as a solution to their illness. Hundreds if not thousands of people each year would miss valuable time with loved ones - and in some cases the chance of recovery. 

“Assisted suicide claims to be compassionate but, in fact, it turns vulnerable people into problems that can be ‘fixed’ with a lethal injection.

“The display of shoes outside Parliament [showed] the devastating reality that we will not be able to get back our family and friends who take the option of assisted suicide.

“Helping people to end their lives is neither compassionate nor caring. We cannot be a society that discards our most vulnerable people. We cannot say that they are ‘better off dead.'"

"This deadly bill is in no way compassionate and the House of Lords must reject it," Christian Concern concludes.