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"Victory": Assisted Suicide Amendment Defeated in British House of Lords

By Hilary White

WESTMINSTER, July 8, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pro-life campaigners in Britain yesterday welcomed a reprieve in the battle against euthanasia as a bill that would have legalised assisted suicide was defeated in the House of Lords. In a vote of 194 to 141, an amendment to the government's Coroners and Justice Bill was defeated last night that would have sanctioned assisted suicide in the UK and facilitated Britons going overseas to commit suicide.

The amendment had been put forward by Charles Falconer, a former Lord Chancellor and major figure in Tony Blair's New Labour and part of a cadre of euthanasia campaigners at Westminster. Under current UK law, it is illegal for someone to assist another to commit suicide, even if done out of the country. The chief prosecutor, however, has instructed police to turn a blind eye to violations in the latter case.

Paul Tully, general secretary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children called the defeat of the bill a "significant victory for the right to life."

"Time and again Parliament has blocked attempts to undermine the protective ban on assisted suicide," he said. Tully called upon euthanasia campaigners to drop their parliamentary effort that is "offensive to very many people who live with, or care for those with, disability or terminal illness."

Peter Saunders of the Care Not Killing Alliance, in an email to supporters, congratulated them for their lobbying efforts and called the vote a "fantastic result." He said, "We have fought them off for another year."

In the debate in the House, Baroness Campbell, a disability rights advocate who has spinal muscular atrophy, said that the amendment would send "a signal of despair" to the disabled and the terminally-ill. Lord Falconer's amendment would be a major change in the way our culture regards people who are disabled, she said.

She warned the House, "Legalising premature death as a treatment option plants a seed of doubt about one's right to demand help to live with dignity and undermines the state's responsibility to ensure that all citizens can live with dignity.

"If this amendment were to succeed, it would place a new and invidious pressure on disabled and terminally ill people who think that they are close to the end of their lives." She noted that no major disability organisation supported the amendment and only a minority of vocal disabled individuals supported it.

Lord Neill of Bladen said if Lord Falconer's amendment were passed, it would be "inevitable that people will be pressured to signing up for death."

Former Conservative Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay, who also opposed the changes, said, "In my view, respect for and protection of human life are a defining characteristic of a civilised society.

"This country has long had protection in place in one form or another against assisted suicide. Any proposal to alter the current position involves a judgment that a certain kind of life, or a certain span of life, has become unworthy of support from that principle."

Meanwhile, however, euthanasia continues to gain ground through the "backdoor" of medically sanctioned dehydration. Under government guidance issued in 2006, doctors are under threat of possible criminal charges of assault if they refuse to allow patients to die by removal of food and hydration tubes.

The government's guidelines instruct doctors, "If you are satisfied that an advance decision exists which is valid and applicable, then not to abide by it could lead to a legal claim for damages or a criminal prosecution for assault."

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

UK Considers Euthanasia Amendment: "Beginning of the Creation of a Death Cult" Says Lord Alton 

UK Doctors Face Jail if They Refuse to Euthanize Patients 

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