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UK Euthanasia Bill Defeated In House of Lords

By Gudrun Schultz

LONDON, United Kingdom, May 15, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A bill that would legalize assisted suicide in the UK was blocked by a vote in the House of Lords last week, after extensive debate and protests. An amendment to delay the bill for six months was supported by a majority of 48 votes.

The Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill bill would allow doctors to give terminally ill patients lethal drugs to end their own lives. Those opposing the bill said it would offer a backdoor welcome to euthanasia, as well as strip protection from vulnerable members of society.

Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat who opposed the bill, said,” Everybody in your Lordships’ house knows that those who are moving this bill have the clear intention of it leading to voluntary euthanasia. That has always been the aim and it remains the aim now,” the BBC reported Friday.

A petition against the bill was presented to the House on Friday, containing the signatures of more than 100,000 people opposed to assisted suicide. Care Not Killing, an organization working to promote palliative care in opposition to euthanasia, gathered the signatures within a month’s time.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which campaigns to protect the right to life from conception to natural death, has worked to oppose repeated efforts to introduce the assisted-dying bill and led national letter-writing campaigns lobbying house members to reject the bill at Friday’s hearing.

SPUC general secretary, Paul Tully, said in a press release last week, “The bill runs counter to the right to life of gravely ill and dying people, and would undermine the status of elderly and disabled people. We believe it would also lead to the practice of active euthanasia—extending the provision for passive euthanasia in the Mental Capacity Act, due to be implemented next year.

“The views of medical bodies, disability rights groups and faith organisations have rightly been prominent in the debate, and the need to protect rather than further undermine, the right to life has won the vote today. We must not relax our efforts to ensure the wider and more effective provision of palliative care, which all those participating in the debate have agreed upon.”

A recent poll by the Royal College of Physicians showed that 73% of its members are opposed to physician assisted suicide or euthanasia. The medical community and disability advocates were vocal participants in opposition to the bill.

The man responsible for introducing the bill, Lord Joffe, has said he will bring it forward again at a later date, and the government has said it would not block another hearing.

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