We Can Still Stop the Radical UK Assisted Suicide Bill

On November 29 a majority of MPs in the British Parliament voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at its Second Reading.

The current law, the Suicide Act 1961, makes it a crime for anyone to “encourage or assist” another person to take their own life. It protects everyone equally from being encouraged or assisted to attempt suicide, irrespective of the health of the person being encouraged or assisted. Guidance on the use of prosecutorial discretion focuses on the reluctance of the person assisting, the nature of the assistance and whether the person encouraging or assisting is the victim’s doctor. It makes no mention of the health of the victim.

Notwithstanding cases of heavy-handed police investigation in cases where prosecution was not in the public interest, the law itself is an important protection, which also admits for merciful discretion. “A hard law, with a kind face”.

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In stark contrast, this Bill permits a doctor to give a lethal substance to “bring about death” to a patient who wished to “end their own life” and allows a doctor to encourage or counsel such a course of action. It legalises physician-assisted suicide. It removes certain people from the current protection of the law.

Evidence from overseas jurisdictions shows that those included in such a law will widen over time, and that it will be used for people who, with adequate medical treatment and care, could have lived many years (as is the case in Oregon).

Even were it possible to limit the application to a small group of people, it would deprive some people of suicide prevention on the basis of their health status. This is why the Bill is flawed not only in its details but in principle. In other jurisdictions increasing numbers of people commit assisted suicide because they feel that they are a burden to others, as the law changes – corrupts – medical and general culture, including the value people give to their own lives.

In addition to this core issue, the evidence from other countries is that the “safeguards” in the Bill, such as the requirement for two doctors to sign off on the provision of lethal drugs, will not stop coercion. There is nothing in the Bill, for example, to prevent the social coercion that is due to the lack of adequate health or social care or to cuts in the benefit system, a form of coercion highlighted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

LifeNews Note: Ann Farmer is a writer at MercatorNet where this story appeared.

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