News

Thursday February 25, 2010


No Need to Change Assisted Suicide Law with New Guidelines: U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown

By Hilary White

LONDON, February 25, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Prime Minister Gordon Brown has welcomed new assisted suicide guidelines issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions, saying that, without having changed the letter of the law, the new guidelines have “weakened” the push for the legalization of assisted suicide.

Pro-life campaigners, on the other hand, have been more forthright, calling the guidelines an outright victory for the euthanasia and assisted suicide lobby.

The new guidelines will allow relatives to help loved ones commit suicide without being prosecuted as long as they have not gained personally by doing so. However, DPP Keir Starmer denied that the law had been changed or that the guidelines open the door for legalized euthanasia.

Starmer said, “The policy is now more focused on the motivation of the suspect rather than the characteristics of the victim. The policy does not change the law on assisted suicide. It does not open the door for euthanasia.”

Although committing suicide was decimalized in 1961, assisting suicide remains a criminal offense in England and Wales. The law, however, allows the DPP to use his discretion in deciding whether to bring such cases to trial. In a decision last year, the House of Lords Judicial Committee ordered Starmer to issue new guidelines that would “clarify” the law in cases where people assist in another’s suicide without a view to personal gain.

Starmer added that the new set of guidelines “does not override the will of Parliament. What it does do is to provide a clear framework for prosecutors to decide which cases should proceed to court and which should not.”

Debbie Purdie, one of Britain’s leading euthanasia and assisted suicide campaigner, told the Daily Telegraph that she welcomes the new guidelines. Purdie, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and has fought in the courts to change the law to allow her husband to help her commit suicide, said, “The important thing about the guidelines is they’ve been able to really clarify the difference between malicious encouragement and compassionate support for somebody’s decision.”

Some have praised a column by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which appeared Wednesday in the Daily Telegraph, for expressing his apparent support of the pro-life position on the issue. However, Brown’s argument has actually supported the pro-life objections to the guidelines.

Brown praised the guidelines for having recognized the “complexity” of those cases in which people have helped ill loved ones to commit suicide. While warning against directly changing the law and praising the advances in palliative care for the dying, Brown reiterated the rhetoric of the assisted suicide campaigners, writing, “These are all difficult issues and we should remember that at the heart of each case is a family in tortured circumstances, which has to make the most agonising of choices.”

“Following this clarification, and because of some important developments in care over recent decades, the case for a change in the law is now weaker,” Brown wrote.

Gerald Warner, a staunchly pro-life columnist for the Telegraph, is not among those who are convinced by Brown’s rhetoric in praise of palliative care and a “good death.” Warner called the guidelines “weasel-worded” and said that the facts contradict Starmer and Brown’s warm assurances.

They do indeed override Parliament and change the law, Warner said, “by radically hobbling its implementation.” Warner cited suicide-campaigner Debbie Purdie’s positive response as evidence.

“Changing the application of assisted suicide law to focus on the supposed ‘motivation’ of the perpetrator dilutes its efficacy in a way that would not be countenanced in respect of other statutory enactments.”

“Britain,” Warner wrote, “is governed by statute, not by guidelines. The will of Parliament, reaffirmed very recently, is to maintain the status quo. So, who empowered Mr. Starmer to subvert it on his own initiative? The answer is not far to seek: Gordon Brown.”

Brown’s column, he said, is written in “typical snake-oil salesman fashion.” Its purpose, he said, was to do nothing more than promote his putative pro-life credentials on the eve of a general election.

“The real purpose was to nod through a change in the law without consulting Parliament, while repudiating all responsibility,” Warner concluded.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said on Thursday, “It is not credible for Keir Starmer to claim that he has not relaxed prosecuting policy on assisted suicide. The new policy effectively decriminalises assisted suicide in a wide range of circumstances.”

SPUC’s commentary dovetailed with the Prime Minister, saying that the changes have given assisted suicide and euthanasia campaigners everything they could want.

“The focus on motivation (why the suspect assisted a suicide) rather than intention (the suspect’s deliberate will to assist the suicide) is a radical departure from the rule of law. The ‘victim’s wish to die’ is the most significant factor now in the guidelines.

“It undermines the law, and is the main concession that the euthanasia lobby was seeking.”

Read related LSN coverage:

U.K. Commons Passes Sex-Ed Bill Forcing Schools to Promote Homosexuality, Abortion

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/feb/100224.html#4

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