Reports indicate UK assisted suicide bill may be set to fail

The United Kingdom (UK) bill to legalize assisted suicide may be in dire straits, with Parliament refusing to give the legislation more time before the May deadline.

Key Takeaways:

• The UK parliament has been considering the “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life)” bill.

• Lawmakers and many others have expressed serious concerns about the possibility of coercion and abuse should the legislation be passed.

• The Labour chief whip in the House of Lords, Roy Kennedy, announced this week that he will not give the bill more time before the May deadline.

The Details:

In Parliament, all legislation must pass by May, or it will automatically fail.

According to Sky News, Roy Kennedy announced this week he will not give the bill more time. Legislation can only be debated on Fridays unless there is extra time allowed for the bill, and with only six Fridays left, Kennedy said there is not enough time for the bill to pass by May. That would mean the bill has to start all over again, from the very beginning, in the next legislative session.

Supporters of the bill say opposition sabotaged the legislation.

Esther Rantzen, a journalist and campaigner for the bill, claimed it was "a handful of peers" blocking it. "A few peers for their own reasons have decided that they're going to stop this going through parliament, and the only way to stop them would be to invoke the Parliament Act," she said, "which has happened before, or get rid of the House of Lords — they're clearly not fit for purpose."

Dr. Gordon McDonald, chief executive of Care Not Killing, disagreed.

"This issue is very difficult, and it needs proper scrutiny — that's what the members of the House of Lords have been doing," he said. "It didn't get proper scrutiny in the House of Commons. It's right that parliaments look at these bills properly and give them due consideration; that's what the House of Lords is doing."

The Backstory:

There has been widespread resistance to the legislation, particularly from disability advocates, including Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson (a former Paralympian) and actress Sophie Turner, best known for her roles in the "X-Men" and "Game of Thrones" series.

Grey-Thompson said that the National Health Service (NHS) is looking to cut between £5bn and £6bn from disability benefits, and if assisted suicide is legalized, this would encourage disabled Britons to die.

"When you understand that we live in a relatively able society, there will be people who sit on the panel who will decide that a disabled person has nothing to offer society and will allow them to end their lives," she said.

Turner spoke of having survived an eating disorder in expressing her opposition to the bill. A letter Turner signed opposing the bill said it "could make individuals with eating disorders eligible for assisted death at times when they are unable to access or accept treatment. Many young people who could recover with effective care might instead receive lethal medication during a period of despair.”

Further fueling the fire were comments from a British neurosurgeon, who openly said during a parliamentary hearing that it's acceptable for "a few grannies [to be] bullied" into dying if it means assisted suicide will be legal.

The Bottom Line:

Even if this legislation truly is halted for now, it is unlikely that campaigners for death will stop their attempts to legalize it. The fight is not over.