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Pro-life advocates are calling for “urgent” action from the public on a bill that proposes to license doctors to supply lethal drugs for patients designated “terminally ill”. Lord Charles Falconer’s bill, introduced into the House of Lords on May 15th, is now headed for second reading and a possible vote in the House of Lords on July 18th.

If it is approved in the House of Lords, the bill, that seeks to “enable competent adults who are terminally ill to be provided at their request with specified assistance to end their own life; and for connected purposes,” will pass on to the House of Commons.

It proposes that doctors be allowed to provide deadly drugs to patients who are “terminally ill” and have “a clear and settled intention to end his or her own life,” who have “made a declaration to that effect” and are over 18. A patient can be given lethal drugs who “as a consequence of that terminal illness, is reasonably expected to die within six months.”

“The attending doctor of a person who has made a valid declaration may prescribe medicines for that person to enable that person to end their own life,” the bill says.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children is asking concerned citizens to “ask as many people as possible to write to Peers,” adding that instead of emails, “short, preferably hand-written letters, relating personal experiences and concerns, are likely to be most effective.”

They warn that the Falconer bill has a better chance of passing than previous assisted suicide bills since changes in the composition of the House of Lords under Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s appointments.

The Falconer bill, they said, “poses a major threat,” with many more ‘Cameron’ appointees reflecting anti-life attitudes. “Although previous bills, such as Lord Joffe's bill, have been defeated in the Lords, this vote could be much closer,” SPUC said.

A long-serving Labour Party politician and former Chancellor under Tony Blair, Lord Charles Falconer has refashioned his political career to become the parliamentary front-man for Britain’s euthanasia movement. This is the fourth bill proposing to legalize assisted suicide to come before the House of Lords since Lord Joffe’s bill was repeatedly rejected by the Upper Chamber. The anti-euthanasia advocacy group Care Not Killing said, “Lord Falconer’s current bill is not considered to be much different from Lord Joffe's, which was defeated 148-100 in 2006.”

Baron Joffe had been working to legalize assisted suicide through the House of Lords since 2003 when he brought forward his Private Member’s Bill “Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill”. Lord Joffe brought the same bill forward again in 2005. That version was defeated in May 2006 by a “motion to delay,” which was supported 148 – 100.

Concerned parliamentarians have put forward an Early Day Motion calling for the summary dismissal of the Falconer bill. The motion quotes a 2014 report from the US state of Oregon on their Death With Dignity Act that showed the “number of deaths through physician-assisted suicide has tripled” since the bill came into effect “and increased by 43 per cent between 2012 and 2013.”

The motion is particularly concerned that “61 per cent of those who received lethal drugs in Washington in 2013 gave as a reason for seeking assisted suicide being a burden on family, friends or caregivers,” and noted that when the bill was being promoted in that state, the public was repeatedly assured that it would only be applied to terminally ill patients.

It warns that “a corresponding change in UK law would endanger the lives of the most vulnerable in society.”

The anti-euthanasia advocacy group Care Not Killing has asked supporters to ask parliamentarians to support the Early Day Motion. They warn that in places where assisted suicide or euthanasia has been legalized, such as Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, there has been an “incremental extension” of euthanasia, to the point where many activists have warned that the practice is “out of control.”

“A major factor fuelling this increase is suicide contagion,” Care Not Killing said.

“Any change in the law to allow assisted suicide (a form of euthanasia) would inevitably place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives so as not to be a burden on others,” they continued.

“These pressures would be particularly acutely felt at a time of economic recession when many families are struggling to make ends meet and health budgets are being slashed, especially when fears about the NHS are actually fuelling support for assisted suicide. The so-called right to die can so easily become the duty to die.”

The bill has generated some vocal opposition. On June 29th, Mark Davies the bishop of the Catholic diocese of Shrewsbury tied the assisted suicide proposal to the “widespread concern about the ill-treatment of the aged and those at the end of life in some of our care homes and hospitals.”

“It seems all the more incomprehensible, then, that we would be considering a change in the law to diminish the protection given to those most vulnerable.”

In a pastoral letter, Bishop Davies condemned efforts to present assisted suicide as a matter of “compassion”. “It is far from compassionate to remove the legal protections provided for some of the most vulnerable members of society.”

“If Parliament allows exceptions to the laws which protect the very sanctity of human life, it would be impossible to predict where this will end.” He likened it to the legalization of abortion in most of the UK in 1967 “in limited and exceptional circumstances” that has grown to an abortion industry, killing nearly 200,000 a year.

“It might sound reasonable to speak of “choices at the end of life” – as the campaigners for euthanasia do – but what choice will be left for many?” Bishop Davies said.

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