UK Parliament members vote in favor of assisted suicide bill

UPDATE, 12/4/2024: The United Kingdom’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill passed its first round of votes in Parliament, in what’s been called ‘a historic step‘ towards allowing adults, who are given six months or less to live, the right to assisted suicide.

After five hours of heated debate, 330 Members of Parliament voted in support of the bill with 274 voting against it. Similar legislation had failed to pass in 2015. Now, the bill will face heavy scrutiny over the next several months as MPs review over 200 proposed amendments, with some saying they would rescind their support if certain amendments are not included in the bill. After the amendments are voted on, the bill will need the approval of both Houses of Parliament before it can become law.

11/28/2024: The Parliament in the United Kingdom plans to hold a vote just days from now, on November 29, regarding a controversial ‘right to assisted suicide” bill. Although many in the UK have voiced their opposition to the bill, and concern for the vulnerable people that would be affected by it, others push forward, potentially unaware or apathetic to the ethical atrocities that likely lay ahead if assisted suicide is legalized.

When a similar UK bill was brought to light in 2021, Lady Meacher, the bill’s creator, commented on the National Secular Society podcast, saying, “There’s so many safeguards… you can overdo it and make the thing pretty unusable.” Philosopher and author AC Grayling, an avid supporter of assisted suicide, cited “compassion” as he discussed his support on the podcast.

“… Why not [allow assisted suicide] for somebody who simply cannot come to terms with being wheelchair-bound, let us say?” Grayling asked. “Or who is clinically depressed and is never going to be independent of medications for the rest of their lives?” Grayling is in favor of MAiD (“medical assistance in dying”) for any and all who ask for it, with no restrictions. He argued on the podcast that it is traumatic when “tens of thousands” of people commit suicide every year, but suggested that’s “because it’s not done in a clean quite helpful, sympathetic way[.]”

In reality, as Wesley J. Smith noted at National Review, “Normalizing suicide as an answer to suffering caused by illness, studies have shown, normalizes and increases suicides more generally.”

As Live Action News reported in October, assisted suicide is currently “illegal under the Suicide Act (1961), which makes it unlawful to ‘encourage or assist someone to commit suicide.’ The penalty for violating the law carries up to 14 years in prison.” And despite the fact that the bill hasn’t even been brought for a vote yet, “pro-death groups are already suggesting the broadening of the criteria on who should qualify.”

READ: Welsh Assembly holds ‘historic’ vote opposing assisted suicide as UK Parliament considers bill

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s bill, dubbed “The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life)” Bill, grants eligibility for assisted suicide to those who have lived in England or Wales for at least the past 12 months; those who are currently registered with a GP and have been for at least 12 months; those who have been diagnosed as terminally ill and are also “expected to die within 6 months”; and lastly, those who are deemed mentally fit for making their wishes known and are not being coerced into medicalized suicide. 

Following this, there is at least a three-week waiting period from the start of the application process to allow time for required public statements from the applicant, for multiple practitioner approvals, and for a judge’s ruling in approval of the decision. (These are the safeguards Lady Meacher found to be “overdone.”) Currently, mental illness alone is not enough to make someone eligible to be killed in the UK. However, other countries — like Canada — are an indication that safeguards are quickly eroded.

Yet, in a rare moment of sanity in the nation, a Canadian judge stopped a woman with bipolar disorder who attempted to acquire access to MAiD through a different doctor in a different province. “In this case, (the woman) is actively pursuing death, over the objections of the physicians who actively treat her. She has come to B.C. because she was able to find someone in B.C. who would approve,” the documents said. They later noted that her condition “is treatable but (the woman) has not followed treatment recommendations.”  

Meanwhile, some UK doctors have strong objections to the six-months-to-live “line in the sand” in the Leadbeater bill.

“When someone has only a few days, or certainly only a few hours left to live, it can be easier to understand with a higher degree of certainty that they’re likely to die within that time-frame. But when we’re getting into the territory of months, it is very, very difficult…” said Professor Katherine Sleeman.

Professor Chris Parker, recalling some of his own patients, noted, “I have little doubt that some patients would choose assisted suicide if it was legal, because they were told they had less than six months to live, but in truth, if they had not had assisted suicide, would have lived for years and enjoyed a good quality of life, because I’ve seen patients like that.” 

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