A PRO-ASSISTED dying campaigner has branded Jersey’s draft law as “absolutely barbaric” – warning its eligibility criteria would exclude Islanders facing years of severe suffering without a terminal prognosis.
Published this week, the proposed assisted dying legislation detailed who would qualify for assisted dying, how the process would work, and what safeguards would be in place.
If approved, the proposals would set up a £2.6 million service for terminally ill adults wishing to end their lives with medical assistance following an 18-month implementation period.
The plans follow an in-principle decision taken in 2021 and a vote last year to create a service for those with terminal illness or neurodegenerative conditions.
Michael Talibard, a retired teacher who helped found End of Life Choices Jersey, said the draft law set out “absolutely barbaric” eligibility criteria because it required both a terminal diagnosis – six months for most illnesses and 12 months for neurodegenerative disease – and unbearable suffering.
“Now you have to have six months to live as well as unbearable suffering, and that’s absolutely barbaric,” he said.
Mr Talibard, who emphasised he had not yet had time to study the 200-page proposal in detail, argued that people suffering without a clear prognosis could be in a worse position than those with a limited life expectancy.
“If somebody has that degree of suffering, but they don’t know how long they’ll have to bear it – maybe two years, maybe five, maybe longer – then their situation is far worse than somebody who only has to put up with that suffering for six months,” he explained.
The campaigner added that medical forecasts of life expectancy were “notoriously subjective and unreliable”, and rejected the idea of passing an imperfect law that could later be improved.
“If we’ve got the bad law in place, my fear is it’ll stick with us for a long time,” he said.
“I actually hope it fails to pass, because then, in two or three years when public opinion has moved even further in the right direction, we might be able to propose a good law.”
Deputy Louise Doublet, who chairs the panel scrutinising the proposals, said the issue warranted “serious consideration”.
“In my view, it’s one of the most important pieces of legislation that will come before the Assembly, certainly in this term, possibly in my whole time as a States member,” she said.
Deputy Doublet also praised the development of the legislation for being “thoughtful and considerate”.
She added: “I still feel very proud of Jersey collectively, not just the Assembly, but also the public and how people have engaged with it.”
The Jersey Dying Well Group, which campaigns against assisted dying, warned of risks of “subtle coercion” on people who felt they were a burden on others.
The group said: “Errors in prognosis and diagnosis are likely to occur as human health has always been incredibly difficult to predict accurately, and this will result in people dying earlier than they would have done without intervention.”
The Jersey Dying Well Group reiterated that it believes that “there are no such things as true safeguards”.
It also questioned the impact on health services, warning that the new responsibilities would “divide the industry at a time when there is already well-documented shortages”.
