Assisted suicide bill moves forward in ‘evil’ day for UK
With the bill passing its second reading by 330 - 270 votes, it will now face a number of stages before becoming law: but today's vote is historic.
WESTMINSTER, London (PerMariam) — Politicians in the U.K.’s House of Commons have voted to move forward with an assisted suicide bill, in what has been described as an “historic” and “evil” day.
After less than five hours of debate, members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons voted 330 – 275 to move forward with legalizing assisted suicide. The MPs were voting on Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill, named the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.
Receiving strong cross-party opposition, the assisted suicide bill will now move to the Committee Stage and Report Stage, before coming to the House of Commons for its Third Reading. Should it be approved then, it will move to the House of Lords for the same series of readings and stages, before being returned finally to the House for approval.
Right To Life UK (RTL), who have been heavily involved in campaigning against the bill, urged people to renew calls for politicians to oppose the bill at the Third Reading. The vote “was far closer than commentators originally predicted,” RTL stated following the vote.
RTL spokesperson Catherine Robinson added that “this Bill can and must be defeated in Parliament. It still has a long way to go and presents an acute threat to vulnerable people, especially in the context of an overstretched healthcare system. Even members of the Prime Minister’s own cabinet recognise this problem and that, within this environment, certain people will likely be particularly vulnerable to coercion.”
Fellow campaigning organization Christian Concern warned that “today is indeed a very Black Friday for the vulnerable in this country, but this is not over. The proposals in this dangerous bill have been completely exposed.”
“The proposed safeguards are completely meaningless, and more and more MPs are waking up to that reality. This bill will create more suffering and chaos in the NHS, not less, and if it goes through, the vulnerable will become more vulnerable…A compassionate society finds ways and solutions to care for those who suffer until the very end. It does not find ways to end life by suicide.”
Bishop John Sherrington, lead Bishop for life issues in England and Wales, stated after the vote that “we believe that this bill is flawed in principle and also contains particular clauses that are of concern. We ask the Catholic community to pray that members of parliament will have the wisdom to reject this bill at a later stage in its progress.”
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales, Sherrington said, “are particularly concerned with clauses in the bill that prevent doctors from properly exercising conscientious objection, provide inadequate protection to hospices and care homes that do not wish to participate in assisted suicide and allow doctors to initiate conversations about assisted suicide.”
House debates imprecise bill
Despite the impassioned arguments made by Leadbeater and her supporters in the House today, a strong swathe of informed opinion has campaigned against the bill. Over 3,400 medical personnel recently wrote to Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer (who voted for the bill) warning that the bill was “remarkably out of touch.”
Indeed, many commentators observed during the debate that MP’s supporting the bill demonstrated a deep lack of understanding of the parliamentary process and of what they were asking their colleagues to actually support, as regards the wording and terms of the bill.
Leading the opposition to the bill in the debate, Conservative MP Danny Kruger highlighted the inadequacies of the bill, particularly with regards the process by which a person might get help to kill themselves. “In many ways the whole issue turns on the question of whether someone is terminally ill. I am afraid that it is a term of great elasticity, almost to the point of meaninglessness,” he said.
“Pretty much anybody with a serious illness or disability could work out how to qualify for an assisted death under the bill,” he warned.
This was echoed by Labour’s Rachael Maskell who said that “this is why disabled people fear the bill: it devalues them in a society where they fight to live.”
Pointing to numerous medical and judicial flaws with the bill, Kruger warned that it “will impose this new reality on every person towards the end of their life, on everyone who could be thought to be near death, and on their families—the option of assisted suicide, the obligation to have a conversation around the bedside or whispered in the corridor, ‘Is it time?’ It will change life and death for everyone.”
During the debate – described by many MP’s and campaigners as woefully inadequate for the subject at hand – Labour MP Florence Eshalomi gave a moving intervention recounting how a patient in an NHS hospital was not given “basic care” by doctors, and how such scenarios would only increase. “We should be helping people to live....before we think about making it easier for them to die,” she said.
Today’s vote was seen by many as the key opportunity to stop the bill. It will not, however, become law yet as it has to pass a number of stages in the two houses prior to that.
Cross party opposition was indeed high. Veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott warned during her intervention in the House that “if the bill passes, we will have the NHS as a 100% funded suicide service, but palliative care will be funded only at 30% at best.”
Notably, Starmer’s own Health Secretary, Wes Streeting MP, voted against the bill. So also did a number of Starmer’s Cabinet members, including Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner. A government spokesman insisted the government was remaining “neutral,” despite the Prime Minister’s support for the bill.
In a signal move shortly before the vote, the Mother and Father of the House (Labour MP Diane Abbott and Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh) also joined forces to oppose the bill publicly. Warning of the dangers of the bill, they instead urged attention – and finances – be directed to proper support for end of life care.
“It is very worrying that we're going to fund the NHS to fund death but we're not adequately funding our hospice movement,” lamented Sir Edward Leigh today.
Reform leader Nigel Farage MP said after the results that the bill risks being expanded greatly: “I voted against the assisted dying bill, not out of a lack of compassion but because I fear that the law will widen in scope. If that happens, the right to die may become the obligation to die.” However, 3 of the 5 Reform MPs voted to approve the bill, thus dashing hopes of many that Reform would be a voting home for true conservative values in the UK.
Prominent pro-life Catholic doctor, Dr. Calum Miller, called the vote’s result “a huge step towards state-assisted and doctor-assisted murder of old and sick people in this country. A truly dark day.” Dr. Miller, like many others, urged continued campaigning to defeat the bill at the next stage.
“An incredibly dark day for the UK but one that we must meet with a renewed determination to protect the vulnerable at both ends of life,” echoed SPUC’s director John Deighan.
Much work now remains to be done for individuals of faith, human rights campaigners and MP’s seeking to oppose the assisted suicide bill. As unintentionally highlighted by one Labour MP during the debate – who linked the vote to other historic events such as Parliament’s approval of abortion, homosexual marriage – the question of assisted suicide is part of a larger assault on the integrity and sanctity of life.
Presbyterian MP from Northern Ireland, Carla Lockhart, summarized the centrality of this issue to the debate during her intervention: “life in all its forms is of inherent worth and value.”
Kruger warned the bill proposed that “idea that our individual worth lies in our utility, valuable only for so long as we are useful—not a burden, not a cost, not making a mess.”
“Let us have a debate in which we remember that we have intrinsic value; that real choice and autonomy means having access to the best care possible and the fullest control over what happens to us while we live; and that true dignity consists in being cared for to the end,” he urged.
With clergy and campaigners widely united in opposing the assisted suicide bill, it now remains to be seen what impetus will be maintained in pushing back against the ever-hungry lobby of the anti-life forces.
Everyone has a price, it seems.