Campaigners supporting improved palliative care have voiced their sadness after the Isle of Man parliament approved a draft bill to legalise assisted suicide.
Members of the parliament’s upper chamber passed the Assisted Dying Bill 2023 on Tuesday and it can now be recommend for royal assent – the ultimate step before passing into law.
The bill allows adults who’ve a terminal illness and a life expectancy of 12 months or less to decide on to die by assisted suicide. They should have lived on the Isle of Man for at the least five years, be registered with an island GP, and have the legal capability to make the choice. Two independent doctors are required to confirm the choice.
James Mildred, Director of Communications and Engagement at Christian advocacy group CARE, fears that nothing good will come of this development. “This deeply sad step turns the Isle of Man’s long-standing approach to suicide on its head. Under this laws, the equal value of each citizen living on the island will not be affirmed,” he said. “Those overseeing the laws have ignored very stark warnings in regards to the prospect of vulnerable people being coerced into ending their lives, and folks acting after a flawed prognosis.“They have also rejected strong evidence of abuses and incremental expansion of laws overseas, and evidence that many individuals select assisted death because they feel like a burden.“The cultural change assisted suicide engenders is a negative one. Recognising the equal dignity and value of one and all and safeguarding essentially the most vulnerable in society requires keeping it off the statute book.”
Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, a coalition of campaigners against assisted suicide, described the approval of the draft bill as a “very sad day for islanders” and warned that countries where the practice is already legal haven’t set precedent.
He commented: “It is amazingly disappointing that given the chilling stories coming out of Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand and US States resembling Oregon, that politicians on the Isle of Man have continued with this dangerous bill.
“In the small variety of places which have legalised state assisted killing, we see the lives of vulnerable people put in danger, with safeguards and restrictions removed, while palliative care doesn’t improve as some have wrongly claimed.
“In Canada hundreds of those that have been killed cite loneliness as a reason. In Oregon a law designed for terminally ailing adults, now views insulin dependent diabetes and eating disorders resembling anorexia as terminal conditions.
“In Australia, guarantees made by politicians to dramatically boost palliative care funding have didn’t materialise resulting in a crisis within the sector. While in Belgium and the Netherlands we’re seeing an alarming growth within the variety of individuals with mental problems being euthanised and at the identical time we’re seeing more children having their lives ended via lethal injection.”
The proposed laws were brought forward in a Private Member’s Bill by Ramsey MHK Alex Allinson, who can also be a GP. He said he was “hopeful” that the bill will change into law before the top of this 12 months and that an assisted suicide service shall be operational by 2027.
Dr Macdonald said that Isle of Man parliamentarians had made “a terrible mistake” in approving the bill.
“Here within the UK, we’ve seen how a draft bill sold to Parliament because the ‘safest on this planet’ has already been watered down with the removal of judicial oversight, extra protections for those with Downs Syndrome and eating disorders rejected, while the bill’s writer recently admitted that meagre safeguards left within the bill might be swept away in only just a few years’ time,” he said.
“And later today, MPs on the Committee shall be asked to vote on rewriting the founding charter of the NHS, which has been in every major health act since 1946, because so-called assisted dying is incompatible with the principles it enshrines, to facilitate a National Death Service. This is why we consider politicians on Isle of Man have made a terrible mistake and why it’s a really sad day for islanders.”
