A former New Zealand parliamentarian has warned Britain against legislating in favour of assisted suicide, citing his own country’s experience.
In June of this 12 months the House of Commons voted 314 to 291 in favour of assisted suicide. However, the measure shouldn’t be yet law because it must also go through the House of Lords and receive royal assent from King Charles III.
Traditionally the House of Lords doesn’t oppose government laws that was within the governing party’s manifesto, nonetheless that proviso doesn’t apply on this case.
Simon O’Connor, who until 2023 was the MP for Tāmaki, said that the promised safeguards used to reassure wavering MPs had proven in New Zealand to be largely illusory.
Writing in The Telegraph, he said MPs “had repeatedly been assured that the safeguards [on the New Zealand assisted suicide Bill] were absolute, inviolable, and complete”.
“But, if the experience of those that have passed these laws is anything to go by, British parliamentarians should think very rigorously before passing the assisted dying Bill. Safeguards so often promised have proven so rarely effective,” he said.
O’Connor said that pro-life activists are correct to lift the spectre of the “slippery slope”. He noted that Oregon, which was considered one of the earliest adopters of assisted suicide, now permits the procedure for those affected by anorexia, diabetes or arthritis.
The British bill, he said, needs to be rejected.
O’Connor’s intervention was welcomed by a spread of pro-life groups including the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, CARE and Right To Life UK.
Caroline Ansell, advocacy director for CARE and herself the previous Tory MP for Eastbourne, said that the British laws is “irredeemably flawed in principle and intimately”.
She warned that the law poses a definite threat to vulnerable groups similar to the poor, disabled and ethnic minorities.
Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for Right To Life UK, said, “Simon O’Connor is correct to focus on New Zealand’s disastrous experience of legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia as a warning sign for those considering Kim Leadbeater’s reckless assisted suicide Bill.”
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