Lord Falconer’s “Assisted Dying” bill is currently being debated in the House of Lords. The bill would legalise assisted suicide by doctors in the UK, and would seriously undermine the principle of “do no harm” as well as the protections that UK law currently gives the terminally ill. It’s very bad news.
But the prospect of the Bill passing has inspired passionate, intelligent, and articulate opposition, and I’ve collected some of it below:
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s powerful intervention [1], made in response to his predecessor, George Carey, announcing support for the bill. Welby said that the law would be “sword of Damocles” hanging over the heads of the vulnerable, and spoke about the death of his seven-month old daughter, Johanna.
Welby also joined a long list of faith leaders who wrote a letter in opposition to the Falconer Bill [2]. They included Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Dr Shuja Shafi, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, and Colonel David Hinton, Chief Secretary of the Salvation Army in the UK.
The Guardian, perhaps unexpectedly, comes out against Falconer’s Bill, saying that “Reshaping the moral landscape is no alternative to cherishing life and the living.” [3]
Parliamentarians including former Home Secretary David Blunkett and Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, the multi-gold-medallist Paralympian, wrote a letter to the Times (Paywall) about the situation in Washington State, where assisted suicide is legal. It’s often cited as a model to follow by the Falconer Bill’s proponents, but the letter-writers point out that 61% of the 159 people who chose to die by lethal injection in the state did so because [4]they feared becoming a ‘burden on family, friends or caregivers’. [4]
Baroness Grey-Thompson warned that a “right to die” could all-too-easily become a duty. [5]
The Care Not Killing Campaign show how public support for the Falconer Bill drops dramatically when people are exposed to even one argument against it. [6]
Laura Perrins wonders what the passage of the law would do to doctors [7], and the trust placed in them.
And Tim Stanley analyses the tactics used by Falconer and his supporters to bring the “right to kill” Bill this far. [8]
Finally, there’s the Daily Telegraph’s Live Blog of the debate in the Lords [9], which does a very good job of summarising contributions for and against the bill. The standard of debate is actually very high – we can only hope that it leads to the right conclusion.