Christians are praying that more MPs might be persuaded to reject Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill when it’s debated again the House of Commons on Friday.
The Westminster debate comes just days after the Scottish Parliament backed similar proposals for Scotland recommend by Lib Dem MSP, Liam McArthur.
Ciarán Kelly, director of The Christian Institute, called the bill “extremely dangerous” and said it was “no overstatement to say it is a matter of life and death”.
“Should this bill turn out to be law, doctors would legally be permitted to assist adults deemed to be terminally sick to kill themselves,” he said.
Friday’s debate will have a look at amendments to the bill. A final vote is predicted next month.
Mr Kelly expressed dismay that lots of of “reasonable” amendments geared toward making the laws less dangerous have already been rejected, and that even limited safeguards have been “stripped away” within the months since MPs first voted to advance the bill to the subsequent stage.
“It is imperative that, every time that vote does come, MPs show up in numbers to defeat this terrible laws,” he said.
“There are many good reasons to oppose this bill: the absence of safeguards, the scope for coercion, the inevitable expansion, the impact on palliative care services, and the pressure it places on vulnerable people to finish their lives for fear of being a ‘burden’.
“Most significantly, as Christians we also know the proposal breaches the Sixth Commandment and denies the worth of every body as a person made within the image of God.
“People contemplating assisted suicide are at their most desperate. Tragically, they might consider they’re higher off dead. Such people need a transparent, firm law to guard them in these darkest moments. The law shouldn’t affirm the assumption that their lives should not price living.”
The process has come under criticism for being rushed, with MPs given little time to scrutinise last week’s impact report by the Department of Health and Social Care.
The report estimated that, should assisted suicide be legalised, between 164 and 787 people in England and Wales would go for it in the primary yr, rising to between 1,042 and 4,559 a yr by the tenth yr of its implementation.
Grimly, the report also suggested that assisted suicide could save the NHS near £60 million over 10 years.
Gordon Macdonald, CEO of the Care Not Killing coalition, which is campaigning against the proposals, said, “Under pressure to make an already stretched NHS budget address growing demand for its services, it is just not hard to assume a Westminster government further expanding an assisted suicide law — or the courts intervening to make sure individuals who should not dying should not discriminated against — as happened in Canada.”
He continued, “At a time when the NHS budget is under huge strain, the UK hospice movement has a funding black hole of £150 million, and one in 4 patients who would profit from quality palliative care aren’t receiving it, passing the Leadbeater and McArthur bills can be huge mistakes.
“Unless the bills are defeated, people who find themselves elderly, disabled and dying will inevitably be placed under terrible pressures to finish their lives prematurely.”
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