Do We Have The Right To Die? With Lady Hale and Rowan Williams (Part One)

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**Mia Sorrenti** (0:53)
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti.
Should assisted dying be enshrined as a fundamental right? Or does it place our most vulnerable citizens in profound danger?
Lady Hale, former president of the Supreme Court, and Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, went head-to-head to debate this urgent and divisive question live on stage at King's Place in London. This May, Intelligence Squared staged this live debate to mark the launch of Do We Have The Right To Die? The second book in our partnered Think Again book series published by The Bodley Head. Today's episode is part one of this discussion, recorded live in London. Let's join our host, Dr. Zan Van Tulliken, live at King's Place.

**Zan Van Tulliken** (1:42)
Well, thank you very much, everybody, for coming out on a Wednesday evening to deal with, I think it's quite a big topic for a Wednesday evening. And I should say, I feel a tremendous sense of gratitude and respect for the fact that this is, it is a big topic. And, you know, I have small children, the middle of the week is tough. Engaging with this topic is not something that everybody wants to do all the time. It's not an easy thing to think about. It's deeply complex. It does not seem to bleed into the culture war because it's so complex. It doesn't sort of easily divide us on lines. Perhaps divides us more on what we're willing to imagine and what we'd like to imagine for ourselves and for our family members. So it's something I trained as a doctor. I spent many hours by bedsides talking to patients who said a version of, could we turn the machine off now? And sometimes I would get a call back to the wards, and in a very English way they'd say, could I have one more go at the machine? And you'd say, absolutely, don't feel bad. And then I'd be called back a couple of hours later, I think I'm done with it, can we turn it off?
30 minutes later, I'd be called back. Again, with real English awkwardness, I'm actually not ready to die. Could we turn the machine back on again? And this might go on all night. And sometimes in the morning they'd say, I'm glad I stuck with it, that's great. And actually they'd leave hospital. And other times, they wouldn't be glad they stuck with it. So I don't think there's any straightforward ways through this. The other thing I should say, because we will each discuss our personal points of view.
My family is Canadian. My mother is in the audience. She's Canadian. My son lives in Canada. And in Canada, they do have medically assisted dying. And this is something, so I put it on the family, Canadian Family WhatsApp group, knowing that I was doing this, thinking what will the response be? Will they know about it? Will they be aware of it at all?
It accounts for 5% of deaths in Canada. And every single person in my family, young or old, cousins, aunts, uncles, all of them knew someone who had taken this option. So we have a country that is incredibly culturally similar, similar demographics, who use this service all the time. It's a very, very common thing to do. And that should force itself on our minds. You may find that horrifying. You may find that invigorating and thrilling. But I think this is why it's so important that you're here tonight. So I'm very grateful that you've all come out.
I want to get a sense of the mood in the room. You've been sent a QR code beforehand, so you may have voted. If not, there will be a QR code coming up now.