Leading pro-life groups in the U.K. are planning to demonstrate on Wednesday outside of Parliament against a bill that would legalize assisted suicide.
The proposal, introduced by Member of Parliament (MP) Kim Leadbeater, is scheduled to get its first reading before legislators. Pro-lifers, armed with data from others countries where euthanasia is legal, plan to offer a counternarrative to arguments that “Death with Dignity” is a public good.
Calling on MPs to “kill the bill, not the ill,”, members of Distant Voices, Christian Concern, the Christian Medical Fellowship and other organizations will plan to demonstrate the “extreme consequences seen around the world where assisted suicide and euthanasia have been legalized.”
Dr. Mark Pickering, CEO of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said assisted suicide advocates are deceptively using language such as “choice, compassion and dignity” to sound benevolent.
Pro-life groups plan to tell stories of those who have died because of assisted suicide. Among them: Alan, 61, who was euthanized in Canada with hearing loss as his only condition listed; Zoraya, 29, who was euthanized in the Netherlands because of “mental suffering”; ‘Sophia’, 51, who was euthanized in Canada after ‘begging’ for better housing to help with chronic pain; Alexina, 36, who was smothered with a pillow in Belgium after failed euthanasia.
In nations where assisted suicide is legal, guidelines to protect healthy people have generally been scuttled for more liberal use of so-called “death with dignity.”
According to Christian Concern, legal euthanasia—often called “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD) in Canada has seen a twelvefold increase since its introduction in 2016.
“Initially, only those whose death was ‘reasonably foreseeable’ were eligible, but following legal cases and campaigning, MAiD has been extended even to those suffering solely from mental illness. MAiD now accounts for over 4% of deaths in the country and is the fifth leading cause of death,” Christian Concern said in a statement.
Baroness Finley, a leading critic of assisted suicide, told the London Telegraph she is concerned the weakest members of society will be exploited.
“You will be told that watertight safeguards can be written into an assisted suicide bill,” she wrote. “But how do we define terminal illness? Diagnoses can be wrong and prognoses are notoriously inaccurate.
“There should be no coercion, but who can really judge this? In Oregon, over 47% of those who accept assisted suicide do so because they feel they are a burden. That feeling is itself coercive.”
Andrea Williams, Christian Concern CEO, added: “Helping people to end their lives is neither compassionate nor caring. Parliament and the courts have rightly refused to change the law multiple times in the last few decades. … We cannot be a society that believes some people are ‘better off dead.’”
Photo: Peter Marshall / Alamy.com