MSPs debate scores of amendments to dangerous assisted suicide Bill

The Scottish Parliament is considering more than 300 amendments to Liam McArthur’s deeply flawed assisted suicide Bill.

Parliamentary time has been allocated over four days this week to debate the Liberal Democrat MSP’s proposals, which would allow those deemed to have a terminal illness and believed likely to die within six months to receive help to kill themselves.

Last week, both church leaders and medics urged MSPs not to legalise assisted suicide in Scotland.

‘Serious omission’

SNP MSP Emma Roddick put forward an amendment, which was not adopted, to prevent a person being approved for assisted suicide if motivated by “financial hardship”.

She warned: “Poverty, loneliness, domestic abuse, bereavement, homelessness, breakdowns of relationships and feeling like a burden are not uncommon experiences for those who are diagnosed with a terminal illness.”

Stephen Kerr of the Scottish Conservatives highlighted a serious omission from the Bill, “which concerns what happens if a woman who is seeking an assisted suicide is pregnant”.

“Would the law allow a doctor to prescribe a lethal substance knowing that it would also end the life of a viable unborn child?”

Commenting on the introduction of a ‘time limit’, Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes questioned how fellow parliamentarians managed to “square the appearance of a safeguard of a six-month prognosis with the reality that doctors, particularly palliative care doctors, say that that is, in their experience, uncertain”.

Palliative care

Concerns about palliative care funding were raised by Michael Marra of Labour, who pointed out that “not a single line in the Scottish spending review identifies further resource for palliative care”.

Former Conservative Leader Douglas Ross warned: “If we do not ensure that palliative care is funded and accessible, we risk presenting people with a false choice between unbearable suffering and ending their life prematurely. True autonomy can exist only when people are able to access the care that they need, regardless of circumstance.”

Independent MSP Jeremy Balfour told Holyrood: “Many disabled people fear that the bill could, implicitly, make them feel that their lives are automatically considered eligible for ending, simply because they live with a disability. That is a message that the Parliament must never, ever send.”

McArthur’s Bill passed Stage 1 by 70 votes to 56. Several MSPs said they only voted in favour of the proposals to allow time for debate. Following MSP Russell Findlay’s recent withdrawal of support, only four more need to switch their vote for the Bill to fall at Stage 3 on 17 March.