Protesters have gathered outside Parliament to make their opposition to assisted suicide often called MPs debate Kim Leadbeater’s bill proposing a change to the law.
The Labour MP’s private member’s bill outlines plans to legalise assisted suicide for terminally ailing people in the event that they have the mental capability to make the choice for themselves and the consent of two doctors and a High Court judge.
Supporters claim it can give people dignity at the top of their life but opponents say it can put vulnerable people vulnerable to coercion. Critics also fear that promised safeguards are unlikely to carry for long before the factors is widened to incorporate non-terminal conditions, as has happened in countries where it’s already legal like Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium.
Christian Concern and Distant Voices have organised a protest outside Parliament as MPs debate the bill on Friday.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern and a non-practising barrister, is sceptical of supposed protection measures within the bill.
“This bill accommodates no meaningful safeguards that might delay in real life. They appear to be designed to provide the looks of rigour, but to fail in practice and immediately be jettisoned,” she said.
“Requiring a judge to approve a request for assisted suicide is unworkable in practice. The 1000’s of cases flooding into the legal system would render any serious attempt at oversight impractical.
“It is deeply shocking that this bill specifically allows doctors to boost the choice of assisted suicide with vulnerable patients at their sole discretion. Doctors mustn’t be allowed to suggest suicide to any patient.
“As we’ve seen around the globe where assisted suicide is accessible, persons are made to feel like a burden and numbers skyrocket. Death is obtainable as whether it is a treatment option and in time, pressures on NHS funding would inevitably mean that the alternative to live is taken away from those that want it.
“A caring and compassionate society would never offer to facilitate suicide. That is the very opposite of caring and compassionate.
“Vulnerable people mustn’t be offered suicide as an option.”
Nikki Kenward, of Distant Voices, who was left locked in her own body by Guillain-Barré Syndrome, believes she would have opted for assisted suicide if it had been available on the time of her diagnosis but is now glad that she lived to experience precious milestones together with her family, like seeing her son grow up and get married.
“If you’d asked me then, I’d have said I’d reasonably not live,” she said.
“Just one in every of my eyes would open and I believe if my family had been asked by the hospital they’d have opted to finish my life. I hadn’t seen my son for months and the considered him being without me broke my heart greater than what was happening to me.”
She added, “I think that suicide isn’t the reply, the reply is to be cared for with absolutely sensible, palliative care.”
