Member

If an assisted death can be made available in 30 days but accessing palliative care takes months, will there be a choice? I will not rehearse the truncated timescales, but their effect would be that a person could choose an assisted death and be dead in 30 or 32 days, depending on the interpretation of the amendments, or in 18 days, if death is considered to be imminent. As we have heard, suicidal ideation is common following the delivery of a terminal diagnosis and it is often the case that people fear death and the process of dying, but that is a remediable, short-term bout of mental ill health. As we have heard, only 32% of prognoses in the weeks and months range are accurate.