Why are we still, in 2018, having to fight for the right to die with dignity?

By failing to address assisted suicide through legislation, parliament has effectively abandoned thousands of people to a fate they wish to avoid at all costs

Death is coming for all of us, but some people have a clearer idea of when they will take their last breath.

For many, that is a confounding idea – how does one deal with knowing that they will soon cease to exist? It can be even harder to comprehend the growing number of people trying to choose exactly when and how they depart this world.

Euthanasia isn’t a new idea, of course. But debate around the concept has been stoked several times in recent years, as people have gone public to talk about their plans for death – and why the UK will not give its citizens the choice.

Take businessman Simon Binner, who ended his life at an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland in 2015 after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND).

Binner’s family supported his decision, but stressed that he would rather not have gone to Switzerland to die – and, in fact, said that he would have lived longer if he’d had the opportunity to avail of the same service in the UK.

However, that particular battle is still being fought, and this week, the cause met another setback as the Court of Appeal rejected the latest attempt to overturn the blanket ban on assisted dying.

Noel Conway, 68, also suffers from MND, and says he feels “entombed” by his illness. He was diagnosed in 2014 and has been fighting for the right to choose a “peaceful and dignified” death over the past two years.

He is seeking a change in the law so that he can be helped to die when he has less than six months left to live and still has the mental capacity to make a “voluntary, clear, settled and informed” decision. This process has encompassed numerous appeals and various hearings, most of which Conway was too ill to attend in person.

On Wednesday, Conway was refused permission to bring his case to the UK’s highest court. His legal battle therefore has come to an end.

It should never have been dragged on for so long.

If the courts weren’t going to let him choose the manner of his death, there seems to be no reason to drag the decision out over a long-drawn and wearing legal wrangle.

While it obviates any charges that the issue isn’t being taken seriously, putting someone with a terminal illness through the emotional wringer in this way is totally unnecessary.

It’s also cruel.

To keep fighting the cause, while also dealing with sickness – which, more often than not, includes severe pain – requires serious bravery. It also takes up a lot of time, time that most people would likely rather spend with their family and friends than repeating the same process over and over in various courtrooms around the UK.

Conway says on his website that MND has put an end to the plans he had for the coming decades, and left him feeling “like a condemned man awaiting execution on a date yet to be determined”. He knows he hasn’t got long left, and yet he was willing to spend what little time he does have fighting so that others don’t face the “unacceptable” choice of dying with dignity or suffering needlessly for who knows how long.

It’s admirable that Conway took up this cause despite the huge challenges he faced in dealing with his diagnosis.

But this is not an issue that people should have to argue over in court.

By failing to address assisted suicide through legislation, the government has effectively abandoned thousands of people to a fate they wish to avoid at all costs. MPs rejected a landmark right to die bill in 2015, by a margin of three to one.

However, the campaign by Dignity in Dying, which supported Noel Conway through his legal campaign, has said attention will now be focused on convincing parliament to step up and take responsibility for the cruel situation in which so many people find themselves.

There are ways to legislate for a way in which people can choose a humane and dignified end to their story. Other countries have managed it – and it simply isn’t good enough to continue allowing this to work as a de facto alternative option for the UK’s terminally ill.

Forcing citizens to travel abroad and die away from the home they love is unacceptable.

Finding a way to make assisted dying legal, safe and regulated might be a difficult task, but there really couldn’t be a more important subject for the government to address – death literally affects us all.