Supreme court judges are agonising over whether or not terminally ill people should have the right to an assisted suicide. They must make their decision alone – for there's little chance MPs, the people supposed to make decisions about the matters which govern our lives, will decisively confront the issue any time soon.
Despite an undercurrent of enthusiasm for a vote – or at least a revival of the debate which might overcome the reservations held by some backbenchers - the status quo looks firmly entrenched in Westminster.
The problem is that all the three main parties agree they don't want to talk about euthanasia. When that happens, it's very difficult for backbenchers to get the issue on to the floor of the Commons.
"Because private member's bills are becoming rarer and harder procedurally, it's much harder for these sorts of issues to be discussed," says Julian Huppert, the Lib Dem MP for Cambridge. He thinks it's "astonishing" the law isn't clear but warns there won't be a change until it becomes easier for backbenchers to raise uncomfortable issues in the Commons.
There's little chance of that happening any time soon, so it's clear the voices arguing against reform are in a strong position. "The vast majority of members of parliament would be against," declares Labour's Jim Dobbin. He happens to be a papal knight, no less, and claims none of his constituents have ever bothered him about the issue.
Dobbin argues that the most important improvement that could be made is a strengthening of palliative care. That's a point agreed with by independent MP Nigel Evans, the former deputy Speaker. "We need to put the emphasis on the health service to ensure those who have terminal illnesses are given the very best quality of life," he says.
While peers have rejected Lord Joffe's right-to-die bill three times this parliament, the Commons hasn't had a meaningful vote since the mid-noughties. Veterans of those debates recall that the “sanctity of life” argument on its own wasn't enough to sway the majority of backbenchers.
Instead they found that the way to win the day was by raising fears about coercion. As one Labour MP put it: "Fancy a trip to Switzerland, Granny? Here, have some Cheerios."
The same fears might prove decisive again if a debate were to be held. One shadow Cabinet minister said she worried about the "unintended consequences" of liberalising the law.
Baroness Ilora Finlay, a specialist in palliative care, goes further still. She suggests that not all caregivers can be trusted.
"If the doctor says I will assist your suicide, the doctor is giving a subliminal message that yes, I agree you'd be better off dead," she says.
"That doctor may well be under financial pressures in the NHS to not have that patient admitted or not be providing the care or whatever. If you've got a doctor who has a pretty negative attitude to medicine, or an excessively pessimistic or possibility ignorant view about what should be done, the patient isn't going to know that.
"I'm putting it very bluntly. Care costs time, effort, money, commitment. When somebody's dead, they're dead."
The decision to give up the ghost could even be warped by the best motives, Evans believes.
If the option was made available, he suggests, might some elderly people decide to end their lives purely because they want to stop being a burden on their family?
Tory whip Gavin Barwell thinks there must be a practical solution to get past these roadblocks. This, it turns out, is the frontline of the debate. Is there a way of allowing some form of assisted suicide that doesn't leave the door open to warped thinking and unnecessary deaths?
"There are issues you'd need to overcome in terms of reassuring yourself people were not going to be put under any pressure," Barwell says. "Those people that have a terminal illness, for whom there is no effective palliative care, ought to have some right to ask for help if that's what they want to do."
Finlay rejects the idea that any kind of law could be completely "watertight". "All the laws we've got, by and large, are there to protect people," she adds. "Here what's being proposed is removing protections for one group of people, who you can't define clearly, and making it more likely for somebody to persuade you you'd be better off dead."
Her argument is a powerful one – and the frontline of the debate is ultimately about whether her concerns could be contained by any piece of legislation. One Lib Dem minister I spoke to said she was yet to make up her mind, and would only really be able to do so once presented with very detailed information.
Huppert has faith that the safeguards could be made to work – and fundamentally believes that "we have to update our law". It doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.
"Parliament is dragging its feet," complains Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association.
"It's quite offensive because we elect politicians to make the difficult decisions, but in fact they're forcing people like Tony [Nicklinson] and Paul [Lamb] to drag themselves through the courts."
Senior Tory Richard Ottaway, who's quitting in 2015, goes even further, calling the absence of a clearly defined law "immoral and dangerous".
If there is no alternative, as some believe, the status quo is as good as it gets.
But with MPs not even trying to come up with any better solution, we're a long way from even finding out whether there is any viable – and more humane – alternative.
