The ProLife Alliance welcomes the House of Lords decision on July 7th, to reject, by 194 votes to 141, Lord Falconer’s perverse amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill.
The intention of the Coroners and Justice Bill is to prohibit incitement to suicide. However, euthanasia supporters had tabled an amendment in support of assisted suicide, which would have exempted from investigation and prosecution those who help terminally ill people to travel abroad to seek assisted suicide in countries such as Switzerland where such actions are legal. It was clearly intended to be the thin end of a wedge.
Senior legal figures have recently called the amendment “ill-defined, unsound and unnecessary”.
Baroness Campbell, who has spinal muscular atrophy, said the pro-euthanasia amendment was opposed by disabiliity rights groups, and would send a signal of despair to disabled and terminally-ill people.
Baroness Finlay, a world authority on palliative care, pointed out that the medical “safeguards” were inadequate. The victims of the serial killer, Dr. Shipman, had not been protected by the need for a second doctor’s signature.
The ProLife Alliance maintains that the Suicide Act 1961 has stood the test of time: it prohibits all assistance with suicide, thus protecting the vulnerable, while compassion in the (very rare) genuinely hard cases can be shown by lenient sentencing or not prosecuting after investigation. Most importantly, current law ensures that every case is investigated.
Pro-euthanasiasts claim that world opinion is moving their way. This is very far from the truth. Only the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) and two states in the USA have legalised any form of assisted dying, while 54 attempts in over 20 states have failed (often after confident predictions of success) as have all four attempts in the UK. This is because the case against legalising assisted suicide is so compelling.
The Swiss are reported to be considering tightening up the law of 1918 on which the lawyer Minelli has based his suicide business in Zurich. In several jurisdictions, even those who in theory support the idea have voted against it on the basis that in practice the dangers of abuse are too great.
However, it is important that everyone who opposes euthanasia continues to speak out. As George Pitcher warns in the Telegraph, the euthanasia lobby will try again:
“the strategy of the death-cult is to keep wearing away at the legislature until they get what they want – the improperly named “Dignity in Dying” is delightfully frank that it wants euthanasia to be established in the UK through creeping increments. So it’s important now that the Government, with the medical profession’s encouragement, restores the bastions of our life-affirming culture by committing resources and investment to end-of-life care, the hospice movement, palliative treatments and proper support, recognition and funding for carers. That way, the arguments from the death-lobby that the best way to address mortality is to kill people will be eroded. The case for euthanasia will evaporate.”
