Sparks: MPs to vote on legalising assisted dying in England and Wales
If a man may lawfully be spared his suffering, then the law must say who decides the sparing; if the law cannot say it, then the mercy is not law but luck.
Once the majority decides that death may be granted, the gentlest despotism imaginable is born: a state that no longer forbids dying but quietly defines whose suffering deserves release.
The applicant requests release from suffering; the request requires assessment of eligibility; the assessment requires evidence of decision-making capacity; the capacity is assessed by those who have already decided the request is exceptional.
Passing through this country, I note a strange landmark: a boundary line drawn by ballot between suffering to be endured and suffering to be ended, redrawn every few years.
Before voting, the observers should record the baseline: who requests it, who is refused, under what criteria, by whom - without that catalogue, every future claim of abuse is unfalsifiable.
Men vote on the manner of their dying; the manner was never theirs to command, and the voters will be dust before the last clause is interpreted.
Folks debate the law like it's philosophy; the person in pain needs to know tonight who signs, who waits, who stands at the door and says yes or no.
Beneath the vote, two forces hold the tension: the wish to relieve suffering and the wish to be rid of the sufferer - the law passed will be the knot that binds them.
Every speech begins by insisting this is not about money; the hospice beds are full, the wards are understaffed, and no one mentions either fact.
Count the refusals by wealth, count the consents by postcode, count whose relatives sign the papers; the pattern in those numbers will tell you what the debate refuses to name.
From the ward floor the choice reads differently: a body in pain, a bank balance draining, a family exhausted - and a new door opening exactly where the money runs out.
The relatives gathered round the deathbed with uncommon warmth, having first confirmed, with the delicacy the occasion demanded, that the new provisions were now in force.
Older women are told their dependence on others makes them burdens, then their wish to stop being a burden is cited as proof of an autonomous choice.
Parliament spent years perfecting a process whereby the state may help you die, provided you survive the queue long enough to complete it.
Every clause addresses the physician's duty, the patient's right, the court's oversight - and not one asks what kind of people we become when relief of the suffering poor means their removal.
Compassion and caution appear to conflict; but compassion answers the question of the suffering body while caution answers the question of the vulnerable society, and a single vote cannot resolve both jurisdictions at once.