It’s not often you find yourself nodding along with those with whom you normally profoundly disagree, and raising an eyebrow at the contributions of those you would count as political allies. But it was the position I found myself in listening to MPs debate assisted dying last week.
What to make of my outbreak of fervent agreement with Conservative Danny Kruger and DUP MP Ian Paisley? Some may see this as the mark of a repressed rightwinger, or a born-again social conservative. If you agree with a member of tribe X, you must de facto be part of that tribe, or so the argument goes.
I see this unlikely affinity differently: as healthy proof that even in the polarised political discourse of 2024, there are some ethically complex issues that resist alignment along a left-right spectrum. How people value the individual in relation to the collective often cuts across divisions between left and right. Do you privilege individual freedom and autonomy, even when that may come at a cost to others? Or do you believe that constraining individual liberty is the price we sometimes have to pay to avoid exploiting those whose autonomy is limited by their material or emotional circumstances?
This axis is key to understanding why people have different views on assisted dying. The strongest arguments in favour are that it should be up to an individual when to end their own life with medical assistance if they are suffering from an illness likely to be terminal. As I wrote last month, one strong reason against legalisation is the clear risk of state-sanctioned wrongful deaths as a result of people being coercively controlled, or even just lightly pressured, into opting for assisted dying by family members or wider society, and the knock-on effects the very existence of this option might have on how society values people with disabilities. The benefit to some more autonomous citizens may be great, but could come at significant harm to others.
It’s not just assisted dying. This axis manifests itself in relation to gender self-ID proposals: should the benefit to some individuals of being able to self-identify into spaces, facilities and sports reserved for those of the opposite sex override the broader risks for the safety, privacy and dignity for women who want or need certain female-only spaces? And on surrogacy: should the benefits for infertile women, single men and gay male couples and for those women who actively desire to be a surrogate outweigh the dangers of a more liberal framework for the women who might be exploited, or the rights of a newborn baby to have a relationship with the mother who gestated them? There are also parallels with the legalisation of prostitution: there are some for whom selling sex may genuinely be a lifestyle choice, but how should their autonomy be balanced against the risks to women coerced into this dangerous industry?
It’s no coincidence that all these issues relate in some way to women’s rights, given that coercive control and exploitation are more likely to be experienced by women. And there is an additional dimension on top of the difference between those who understand personal choice as the product of autonomous individuals, and those who see it as a brew of human relationships and cultural influences.
Some people generally assume that enough individuals act with the best of intentions and in good faith to mean the risks of exploitation are marginal. Others believe that the small minority of individuals who behave badly or dangerously means society must implement safeguards to protect those who are vulnerable.
Although sweeping claims are often made in relation to the evidence base on both sides, the truth is that, when it comes to all of these issues, there is very little reliable data that enables judgment of the empirical balance of freedoms against risks. Exploitation defies measurement because so much of it goes under the radar, and takes painstaking research to uncover.
And so it is often our own instincts about human nature and how we understand the lives of others, not just our own, that drives our position on them. I have no doubt that writing about male violence against women and child abuse has shifted my outlook from team autonomy to team interdependency on a much wider range of issues, because I understand more about the world than I did a decade ago.
Although these issues defy definition into left and right – some of the strongest proponents of gender self-ID and assisted dying are Cameroonian Conservatives, for example – we live in a world where the tribalism of social media encourages polemicists to see the world through the lens of good versus evil.
Conservative MP Matt Hancock last week positioned assisted dying as the next logical step for the steady march of social progress after the introduction of same-sex marriage; a ludicrous comparison that elides the fact that there is much more to this question than liberal values and personal freedom. His colleague Kit Malthouse ridiculed safeguarding concerns as “the view the country is teeming with granny killers”. One prominent campaigner painted the well-founded concerns raised in the debate as “pearl clutching”, with connotations of scandalised social conservatives; another wrote a piece describing how watching the parliamentary debate left her “moved to shake some MPs… by the throat”, and “fuming” when concerns were raised about a slippery slope.
Feelings understandably run high when people have personal experiences of suffering; but MPs need to be able to rise above the emotionally fraught timbre of the debate to consider the risks on all sides. Thankfully, some parliamentarians took a more nuanced tone; just as I think it is no bad thing to find myself in occasional agreement with Kruger, I found it reassuring to see a thoughtful MP such as Tonia Antoniazzi, with whom I agree on much in relation to women’s rights, on the other side.
She may come down in a different place to me but her speech acknowledged the validity of many concerns and the importance of properly scrutinising any specific proposals. If assisted dying happens, it will be improved by her involvement. Not only is it OK to disagree with your friends and agree with your opponents; sometimes the world is a better place for it.
• Sonia Sodha is an Observer columnist
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