People contemplating ending their own life consider that it has no value, and that their continued existence can offer no benefit to themselves or anybody else. Advocates of an Assisted Dying Bill are implicitly asking other people to collude with this belief. In other words people are being asked to agree that, because of a physical, medical, or perhaps mental, condition, another person's life is worthless.
The belief that one's own life is worthless is despair. If assisted dying is permitted, then Society as a whole is being asked to join in that despair, to agree that there is no hope. This is an insidious disease; it can very quickly lead to grave injustice because it implicitly encourages people to think that other people may have no worth and that consequently their life can be dispensed with. The people most likely to be viewed like this are the weakest, those who may be considered by others to be a burden on society, those deemed not to be able to contribute to the economic well being of society, useless mouths.
Supporters of assisted dying may believe they are acting out of compassion, but in reality, they have failed to perceive their own despair, and because of this they are unable to recognise that they are attempting to inflict it on everybody else.
Mark Hatcher, Woking, Surrey
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