On Panorama on BBC1 last night Kay Gilderdale defended her decision to assist in taking her daughter’s life and called for a change in the law on assisted suicide. Also on BBC1 delivering the annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Sir Terry Pratchett argued for the creation of assisted suicide ‘tribunals’ to assess the cases of those wanting to die. These programmes come a few weeks before the Director for Public Prosecution Keir Starmer is due to publish the final version of his guidelines on assisted suicide.
The ProLife Alliance accepts that Sir Terry Pratchett and Kay Gilderdale are entitled to express their beliefs but is unchanged in its position that a change in the law to accommodate both assisted suicide and mercy killings is both unnecesary and highly dangerous.
Simon Hopkins, commenting for the ProLife Alliance said:
“End of life matters are never easy and every situation should be treated with compassion. However we should not let emotion get the better of logical, reasoned argument. Any change in the law would weaken the protection currently afforded to the most vulnerable members of our society. As soon as we as a society accept the argument that certain lives are not worth living we create a situation where those who kill the disabled or terminally ill because they are a burden can escape punishment on the grounds of consent or ‘mercy killing’.
“The law as it stands does not need further guidance or amendment and the DPP’s proposed guidelines would circumnavigate rather than clarify the law. To believe, amongst other things, that relatives will always act out of love and compassion is incredibly naïve and would create a two-tier justice system where killing by family members is sanctioned while killing by others remains prohibited. The law as it currently stands gives the DPP discretion over prosecution on individual cases. Those who have a hand in the killing of other human beings should never be given a previous assurance that their actions will not be investigated by the police and the current law provides this safeguard while being sufficiently flexible to take individual circumstances into consideration.”
The majority of medical and disability groups oppose any form of euthanasia or assisted suicide. These include the British Medical Association (BMA), the Royal College of Physicians, and RADAR, the UK’s largest disability campaigning network.
