This article references assisted dying, suicide, and eating disorders.
A bill to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults in England and Wales has been introduced in parliament, with a vote scheduled for 29 November.
Given that one poll revealed 74% of the British public is in favour of legalising it, the vote isn’t unwarranted, but as the debate dominates talk shows and fills column inches, there’s one view neglected from the discussion: that assisted suicide is a women’s issue.
While calls for assisted suicide in the UK centre around words like “compassion,” “choice,” and “autonomy,” critics assert that these issues cannot eclipse the threat it poses to people’s lives, especially to the disabled and chronically ill community. Women are also a potentially vulnerable group.
Why, you ask? Women are more likely to be disabled, to develop a chronic illness, particularly an autoimmune one, to live in poverty, to be left by a romantic partner when they become sick, especially when it’s a terminal illness, and to face the end stages of life with less money and a weaker support system than men. Women are also more likely to require care in a home; in 2021, there were 23 female residents for every ten male residents in care homes for people aged 65 and over, a gap that increases significantly with age.
The introduction of such legislation seems almost inevitable; however, could assisted suicide be used to further erode women’s lives? Would it expose impoverished women to a “it’s for the greater good” mentality?
“Women have always been caregivers, the ones who are selfless, who give up their careers to bring up children, and we’re the ones who may have less financial freedom as a result, so that puts us in a poorer economic state when faced with chronic illness,” says clinical psychologist Dr. Yvonne Waft, a wheelchair user herself who worries that two-tier mental healthcare could devalue her and her disabled daughter’s lives.
“There might be a point at which many women think, well, I’m worthless now; I can’t care for others, and that’s where there’s a risk that we might be persuaded, even by well-meaning family and friends, to think about assisted suicide as a way out.”
“Also, women live longer, therefore live more into old age, disability, and frailty, and there’s that toss-up at the moment: does the elderly lady stay in her own home, or does she go into a care home? And which one’s the most cost-effective?” she tells GLAMOUR. “If you factor in, ‘you could just end it all,’ that would be a neat way to reduce costs. Women will be put in that position because not every woman has supportive offspring; not every woman has the financial means to make choices in that situation.”
It might sound overly dramatic or — because we’re women — “hysterical”, but research shows that 35.7% of people who died by medical assistance in death (MAiD) in Canada in 2021 cited a perceived burden on family, friends, or caregivers to qualify for the “unbearable suffering” required to use the system, a state of mind women would almost certainly be more likely to fall into. We are, after all, socialised to be the carers, not the cared for.
Some believe these fears are potentially overstated. Ali Ross, a psychotherapist who has worked in palliative care, tells GLAMOUR, “I would suggest that [being a burden] is more of a superficial comment that gets heavily reported on, but when you’re inquiring deeper into somebody’s experience of why they want to end their life, that is not the fundamental reason. It might be the most accessible reason, but I wouldn’t say it’s the most grounded one.”
