A vote against assisted suicide within the Welsh Senedd has been welcomed by campaigners against legalising the practice.
Senedd members voted 26 to 19 against a motion calling on Westminster to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales. Powers to legalise assisted suicide in Wales aren’t devolved but reserved to Westminster.
Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan and health secretary Jeremy Miles each voted against the motion.
Right to Life UK said the vote sent a transparent message that the Welsh Senedd opposes the imposition of assisted suicide on Wales by Westminster, which is ready to think about a bill to alter the law next month.
“Assisted suicide campaigners appear to have brought forward the motion with the expectation that they might have the numbers to win the vote and claim support from the Welsh Parliament for Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill, which is currently before the House of Commons,” said Right to Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson.Â
“This would have given their campaign in Westminster a big boost but as an alternative, the tactic has spectacularly backfired with the vote showing that the Welsh Assembly firmly rejects the imposition of an assisted suicide regime on Wales.”
A variety of Senedd members spoke out against changing the law during Wednesday’s debate.
Delyth Jewell, Plaid Cymru member for South Wales East, said, “My fear with this motion—well, my terror, really—just isn’t a lot with how it is going to begin as with how it is going to end.
“There are safeguards in what’s being proposed in Westminster, indeed there are, but every precedent we see internationally shows that no safeguard is sacrosanct; the experiences of Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and a few states within the US show what can so easily, so inevitably, occur.
“Laws are first introduced for people who find themselves terminally unwell, as is being proposed in Westminster, and little by little, the safeguards have been eroded in order that now individuals with depression, with anorexia, and plenty of other non-terminal disorders can qualify — disorders from which individuals can get better, lives that may have been ended that might need got higher.”Â
Joel James, member for South Wales Central, said, “It has been repeatedly proven that assisted dying laws, when introduced, descend quickly into a spread of problems, from coercion by relatives to the hand-picking of specific doctors willing to euthanise.
“It would, I think, set a dangerous precedent and result in a listing of unintended consequences if it was introduced into the UK.”
Darren Millar, member for Clwyd West, said that legalising assisted suicide “would send a transparent message that some lives aren’t price living, and I do not think that that is a message that any civilised society, frankly, must be promoting to any of its residents, especially when there are a lot of people across Wales right away who’re having fun with a satisfying life regardless of their terminal illness, or regardless of a debilitating condition”.
Welcoming the results of the Senedd vote, Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of for Care Not Killing, commented: “This is an encouraging result and proves the more people, including parliamentarians hear about implications of legalising state assisted killing the more they reject changing the law, because they see how it could put pressure on the elderly, terminally unwell and disabled people to finish their lives prematurely. This is strictly what we now have seen within the handful of places who’ve legalised state assisted killing.”
