Pastors and Christian leaders across Scotland have signed an open letter to MSPs urging them to vote against a draft bill that seeks to legalise assisted suicide.
Over 60 leaders have signed the letter organised by the Evangelical Alliance Scotland. They include Josh Johnston, Minister of The Tron Church in Glasgow; Stuart Weir, head of CARE for Scotland; Lynne Paterson, head of Evangelical Alliance Scotland; and Chris Ringland, public policy officer, Evangelical Alliance Scotland.
They said that the bill “undermines the worth of life and lacks the safeguards needed to guard those most in danger from being coerced into premature death”.
“International evidence reveals that initial safeguards in assisted dying laws are sometimes weakened over time. Instead of facilitating death, the main focus needs to be on improving palliative care to supply dignity to the dying. Compassion involves sharing within the suffering of others and serving them, searching for to scale back suffering, not end the lifetime of the sufferer,” the letter reads.
“There are significant ethical and moral concerns surrounding the reduction of life to questions of utility or functionality. By prioritising individual alternative, we risk ignoring the broader consequences on healthcare professionals who commit to act for the great of their patients, on members of the family burdened with the aftermath, and on wider society.
“It isn’t an exaggeration to say this could be probably the most necessary changes in laws our country will ever see – a fundamental ethical shift.
“Protecting probably the most vulnerable members of society needs to be our primary concern. The healthcare system is already rife with inequalities that disproportionately affect those that are elderly, have disabilities, are from minority ethnic backgrounds or reside in poverty. Rather than addressing these disparities, this bill risks exacerbating them.”
An important vote on Liam McArthur’s bill is going down on the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday evening. It will not be the ultimate vote on the laws but will allow the bill to be scrutinised and produce it one step closer to becoming reality.
Opponents include all three of Scotland’s most up-to-date First Ministers, John Swinney, Humza Yousaf, and Nicola Sturgeon.
Sturgeon wrote on Instagram on Monday, “It would risk a situation by which a right to die might change into, within the minds of some people, a perceived duty to die.”
Campaigners against assisted suicide will likely be protesting outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh on Tuesday ahead of the vote. Among them will likely be Silent Witness actor Liz Carr and disabled Scottish Labour MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy.
Duncan-Glancy suggested it was unethical to legislate “for the state to help someone to take their very own life, and in almost every other circumstance we wish the state to legislate for people to live and live well”.
“No one desires to be in pain; I even have lived with chronic pain for 41 years, but the reply needs to be to make sure that as much palliative care needs to be in place as possible,” she told the Guardian.
McArthur’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill is way broader than an identical bill being considered in Westminster because it doesn’t impose a closing date. The Westminster bill requires that applicants for assisted suicide are expected to have lower than six months left to live.
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