In the name of progress: eugenics then, euthanasia now

Telegraph

13-05-2025

Progress may be the most dangerous two-syllable word in politics. Slapped on to all sorts of monstrosities it has become a means of justifying inadequate arguments and evading scrutiny. To the unthinking politician, if an issue constitutes progress it is inevitably part of a wider move towards enlightenment, is an inherently good step and, crucially, must happen sooner or later. The belief means identifying barriers to progress; and, by extension, viewing their removal as a social good.
This isn't a modern outlier or bug but a longstanding feature of progressive thought. It was in the name of progress that the Fabian and socialist eugenicists – from Beatrice and Sidney Webb to Bertrand Russell and Marie Stopes – advocated the sterilisation of the disabled and sick during the 20th century. It was in the name of progress that George Bernard Shaw supported 'the socialisation of the selective breeding of man', even, chillingly, proposing the euthanasia of the mentally ill and other members of the 'unfit' classes via 'extensive use of the lethal chamber'. In short; a very dangerous word indeed. This isn't just a history lesson either; the groups these people supported still exist. Dignity in Dying, the main advocacy group for assisted dying, was founded by a member of the Eugenics Society and was known until 2006 as The Voluntary Euthanasia Society.
In our own day, the same concept is being invoked once more as a sort of unanswerable force. The debate over assisted suicide is intensifying on both sides of the Border this week, as Kim Leadbeater's Private Members' Bill returns to Parliament and Holyrood MSPs voted in favour of a similar Bill proposed by Lib Dem Liam McArthur. In her efforts to champion her Bill on social media, the former is emerging as someone with Van Gogh's ear for diplomacy; both tactless and self-aggrandising. This week she dismissed opponents as 'scaremongering and ideological', while quoting praise of herself from a supporter, describing her as a 'social reformer'. At least irony hasn't been assisted with its death.
The inconvenient truth is that, in this case progress involves the sidelining and rejection of the very people whose needs it claims to advance. The Royal College of Physicians recently published a statement warning that the Bill's 'deficiencies' render it unsafe for patients and doctors. Was this 'scaremongering'? Every user-led disability group opposes the change, as do a majority of palliative care professionals. Are they 'ideologues' too?
If Leadbeater is foolish and groups like Dignity in Dying malign, there is a third and more complacent category of argument invoking the consistently-disproven concept of 'the right side of history'. It is telling that despite supporting assisted suicide in principle, former Scots Tory Leader Ruth Davidson couldn't quite endorse the parallel Bill before Holyrood in its current form. Instead, in a column this week, she urges MSPs simply to trust that they will be able to iron out any problems at a later date. She also cites the number of countries around the world offering assisted suicide as if this, in itself, constituted an argument. What many of these jurisdictions actually show is quite the opposite to Davidson's Panglossian faith that everything will work itself out.
A particularly invidious aspect of this debate has been the manipulation of language. Not only is there a tendency to imply, per Leadbeater, that the pro-side has a monopoly on compassion, relatives' understandable efforts to prevent their loved ones from taking their own lives have sometimes been reframed as 'coercion'. During the 'expert' witness testimony, one Australian MP referred to ' assisted dying ' in exquisitely Orwellian fashion, as a form of 'suicide prevention'. There has even been some squeamishness about using the word 'suicide' at all, though the Bill would by definition amend the 1961 Suicide Act. It's as if they fear this serious change to the social fabric will be impossible without annexing language to limit what their opponents may say. And now, showing tragedy and farce are far closer than we think, Kim Leadbeater is apparently a 'social reformer'.
Parliament's own impact assessment also reveals this tendency. It was slipped out under the radar on Friday afternoon after the local elections. This too contained the dystopian language we've come to expect from the debate; focusing on the service's 'inclusivity'; perhaps to give women, disabled and vulnerable people equal access to death. The Bill already covers a far wider remit than its proponents initially promised. The irony is that Leadbeater and her allies no doubt think of themselves and their actions as progressive. Yet each of them is simultaneously engaged in the business of ignoring the voices of the poor and the vulnerable.
This Bill is so comprehensively at odds with the principles of previous social reform that enacting it will mean rewriting the Bill on which the National Health Service was forged. The legislation is so far-sweeping that the Bill's proponents may become the first people to undo the basic healthcare principle that life should be preserved. This is worth restating for all the 'sensibles' out there; it wasn't Mrs Thatcher or 'Tory privatisation', but a Labour backbencher who will fundamentally change the stated purpose of the NHS – and in a final irony, will do so not in the name of profit but of progress.