Assisted suicide
Campaigners for assisted suicide are stepping up their efforts. There are legislative proposals at both Westminster and Holyrood to enable terminally ill adults to get help to kill themselves.
The House of Commons has voted to advance Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill, despite passionate opposition.
314 MPs voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, with 291 against. The House also rejected amendments to protect those struggling with mental illness, financial pressure, or concerns about being a burden from undergoing assisted suicide.
The legislation will now proceed to the House of Lords, which will consider the proposals over the coming months. Under the Bill, patients deemed to be terminally ill and with less than six months to live would be allowed to receive help to kill themselves.
Anorexia
Although MPs agreed to prevent patients from trying to stop eating or drinking in order to request assisted suicide, Labour MP Naz Shah highlighted that this “does not address concerns about anorexia or close that loophole”.
“When people stop voluntarily eating and drinking, that is not what happens to people with anorexia. People with anorexia stop eating and drinking because they have a psychiatric illness. These are two categorically different issues.”
“Let’s make it clear, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Pathologists, palliative care doctors, geriatrics, almost every eating disorder charity, almost every disabled people’s group does not support this bill.”
‘Assisted killing’
Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat rebuked euphemisms around the term ‘assisted dying’, emphasising that “assisted dying is what a hospice does already, today, now, helping people, caring for people, supporting them. This is assisted killing”.
“When that first 18 or 19 year old, when that first individual, goes and asks for this, it will be we who made that decision, it will be on our consciences, and it will be a decision that has fundamentally changed the relationship between the individual and the state in a way that can never be reversed.”
Mother of the House Diane Abbott said “there is no doubt that” if the Bill becomes law, “people will lose their lives who do not need to and they would be amongst the most vulnerable and marginalised in our society”.
Liberal Democrat MP Calum Miller highlighted that palliative care experts “point to the fact that hospices are underfunded and they don’t have the same ability to serve patients. So I do genuinely question, whether we are in a position today to make a judgement that patients would truly have a choice at end of life?”
Prayer
The Christian Institute’s Director Ciarán Kelly urged Christians to keep praying as the Bill progresses to the Lords.
“Christians will feel grieved that MPs have shown so little regard for the dignity of human life, so little compassion for the concerns of vulnerable groups, and so little respect for the testimony of medical experts.
“But we must not give up. We must continue to pray. And we must now look to the House of Lords, where we can expect better scrutiny of this dangerous and unworkable Bill.”
Hospices
Last week, almost 350 palliative care staff urged the Government not to defund hospices that refuse to harm their patients under an assisted suicide regime.
In an open letter to Health Secretary Wes Streeting, the clinicians expressed alarm that Leadbeater’s Bill gives no protection to hospices “unwilling to facilitate assisted suicide on their premises”.
They warned: “The vast majority of palliative care doctors would not provide assisted suicide. Many would leave their post if assisted suicide was proposed as part of their services.”
“We do not want to kill our patients, nor have them fearful that we may do just that. Let us do the job we are trained to do.”
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