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

The Welsh Assembly, known as the Senedd, has voted 26 to 19 to oppose the updating of laws surrounding doctor-induced death by way of assisted suicide after it was proposed to the Parliament in the UK. Though the vote is “symbolic,” it is considered “historic,” according to the BBC.

Currently in the UK, assisted suicide is 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.

The power to ultimately change the law and allow ‘physician-assisted death’ in the UK is in the hands of the MPs in Westminster, who will debate and vote on plans for an ‘assisted death’ law next month. Led by MP Kim Leadbeater, the proposed plan would allow “terminally” ill adults to end their own lives with the help of a doctor. However, pro-death groups are already suggesting the broadening of the criteria on who should qualify.

In a press release, Right to Life UK noted that the Senedd’s vote is a “major setback for the assisted suicide lobby’s campaign to win a vote” in favor of assisted suicide in the UK Parliament in November. “There was opposition from Senedd members from all major parties including Labour, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives,” the group noted, adding that assisted suicide campaigners had expected to “be able to claim that there was overwhelming support from the Welsh Parliament” for Leadbeater’s bill, but that “the tactic has spectacularly backfired with the vote showing that the Welsh Assembly firmly rejects the imposition of an assisted suicide regime on Wales.”

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, along with other Catholic bishops in the UK, recently voiced stringent opposition to the bill. Nichols said:

No doubt the bill put before Parliament will be carefully framed, providing clear and very limited circumstances in which it would become lawful to assist, directly and deliberately, in the ending of a person’s life. But please remember, the evidence from every single country in which such a law has been passed is clear: That the circumstances in which the taking of a life is permitted are widened and widened, making assisted suicide and medical killing, or euthanasia, more and more available and accepted.

Member of the Senedd (MS), Delyth Jewell, is among those who voted against a law change. “My fear with this motion, my terror, is not so much with how it will begin but how it will end.”

READ: UK Parliament set to officially consider assisted dying bill as opponents issue warnings

Jewell pointed to situations in nations that have legalized so-called ‘assisted death’, such as in the Netherlands and Belgium, where regulations surrounding assisted suicide have been continually eroded. In Belgium, the law has been expanded to allow the euthanasia of children. In the Netherlands, children are euthanized through a loophole, and one in 20 deaths in the country is now due to euthanasia.

“For many disabled people or people who are not close to their family, people who are worried, anxious and lonely, it would leave them feeling they have no choice but to end their life,” she said.

MS Sam Rowlands agreed, stating that allowing assisted death for anyone is a “slippery slope.” He referenced Canada, where beginning in 2027, “people with mental illness… will be offered this as a way out of their situation.”

“It’s a very, very real situation in other places all around the world, and I fear that that would be exactly the same in this country.”

It’s a valid fear. In Canada, a Paralympian, homeless individuals, and addicts have all been pressured to end their lives rather than receive timely access to proper services to support their lives.

Health Secretary Jeremy Miles said that future legislation will require another vote, according to the BBC.

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