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UK Parliament Defeats Measure to Prevent Food and Water From Being Easily Removed From Dying Patients

LONDON, December 15, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - UK Members of Parliament defeated by 297 votes to 203 a proposed amendment to a Mental Capacity Bill to prevent normal, life-sustaining measures of food and water being too easily removed from dying patients. The new bill, which enlarges the ability of individuals to decide on end-of-life treatments by creating "living wills," passed its third reading Tuesday in the House of Commons. Pro-life groups and MPs charge that the bill will bring in euthanasia by the "back door."

Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith argued in support of the amendment, saying the Mental Capacity Bill made withdrawal of life-sustaining food and drink from people suffering with terminal illnesses too easy. "We should consider whether or not, at the end of it all, we should withdraw food or fluids from people who would otherwise live," he said, as reported by politics.co.uk. "That is the critical point. The problem with the bill is that it would give powerful legal backing to a certain interpretation of living wills."

"Under the bill it would be easy to withdraw food and fluids from an individual," Smith argued. "We should make a judgment in favour of life. If we persistently confuse medical treatment with administering food and water, we will find against life."

The UK pro-life group, LIFE, also warned that the new legislation could "open the floodgates" for euthanasia in a similar way the 1967 Abortion Act opened it for abortion. "We are reminded of what happened in 1967 when David Steel's Abortion Bill was being debated," a LIFE spokesperson said, as reported by politics.co.uk. "Again and again we were told that the bill would not open the floodgates. Its purpose was merely to clarify the law, we were told. And what happened? The floodgates opened."

LIFE described the bill as "[an] underhand attempt to licence euthanasia by omission - which would surely be the first step to licensing euthanasia by a direct action, i.e. by commission."

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) also expressed deep disquiet that the Government had refused to reverse the euthanasia nature of the Mental Capacity Bill.

Paul Tully, SPUC general secretary, said: "The damaging nature of the Bill is increasingly being recognised by MPs but the determination of the Government to force it through has not been blunted as we always warned . . . we must work even harder to ensure that the Bill's supporters, both inside and outside Parliament, understand fully the grave threat that it poses."

"In the light of today's farcical proceedings in the Commons, we urge the House of Lords to give the Bill and any new amendments by the Government strict scrutiny, with a view to rejecting the Bill unless the euthanasia nature of the Bill is reversed," Tully concluded.

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