The proposed assisted suicide bill in England and Wales is not yet in force, and as expected, all the barriers are already being bypassed. According to Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP behind the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) bill, if assisted death requests were approved by a group of experts instead of a High Court judge, the law would be strengthened.
The bill, approved by the House of Commons at the end of November and now under review by committees (expected to return to the House on April 25), allows adults in England and Wales with less than six months to live to end their lives, subject to approval from two doctors and a High Court judge, who must verify that the assisted suicide request was not made under coercion. Or rather, it allowed.
Assisted suicide, the “judge” barrier is removed: “It doesn’t exist abroad”
Kim Leadbeater has decided to replace the much-vaunted “judge” safeguard with a group of three “experts,” led by a “high-level legal figure,” who would be responsible for approving the death requests endorsed by the doctors and selected by a voluntary committee of psychiatrists and social workers. She says she did it because the bill has “too many safeguards.” “I received emails saying ‘why are you making everything so difficult?’ We have to remember that at the center of it all is a terminally ill person who wants a choice.”
The support came from the Law Society and the testimony of a former Supreme Court judge, Lord Sumption, at the end of last month: “No other jurisdiction in the world that allows assisted dying has such a requirement,” he exclaimed in front of the commission (appointed by Leadbeater).
The legal protection of the patient is “a waste of time”
“It is not entirely clear what the judge should do… Is he there to ensure that the two doctors have done their job and that the situation is in order, or is he there to form his own opinion on these issues, completely independently of all those who have issued the certificates?” he said, as reported by the Guardian. “If the latter, we are talking about a process that takes a lot of time, involves a lot of additional evidence. It seems to me that this is a safeguard that no other country, to my knowledge, that has authorized assisted suicide, has included.”
He also added that freeing the High Court from the task and passing it to a group of dedicated magistrates to deal with assisted suicide requests would not solve the problem of the “excessive procedural provisions”: the idea that there is legal protection for the patient “is largely illusory and undoubtedly very time-consuming… It involves the state’s intervention in a profoundly personal and distressing process, which in my view is inappropriate.” Perhaps Lord Sumption forgets that this is precisely what the assisted suicide law establishes: requiring and receiving state assistance to end one’s life.
The “6-month” life barrier is also at risk: “Extend it to 12”
Parliamentarians have also heard from doctors in Australian states where assisted suicide is legal, arguing that the six-month life criterion in the English bill should be extended to 12 months. “We know that with a CT scan, we can change a person’s prognosis from 18 to three months,” said Cam McLaren, an oncologist in Melbourne.
No judges. And death within a year. In fact, many people survive a “six-month” prognosis because doctors are not infallible (hence the bill denies families the right to challenge the requests and actions of doctors assisting in suicide in case they are clinically negligent).
All the left’s tricks to pass assisted suicide
These are the latest in a long series of tricks strung together by the MP to sell the assisted suicide bill to parliamentarians. The guarantee of supervision by the High Court may have appeared as a fig leaf, but more than 60 parliamentarians cited its inclusion in the bill as the reason for their November vote in favor. “Since the bill passed the second reading with 330 votes against 275, it is fair to say that this promise of safeguard was crucial in getting it through. Leadbeater knew it better than anyone else: she repeated the promise on six different occasions,” notes Spiked.
After declaring that the November vote was only “to continue the debate,” promising to subject the bill to a “line-by-line examination,” the MP only cared about ensuring that the selection of expert witnesses to bring before the committee was done in secret.
From a law for a few to assisted suicide for those who want it
As we previously wrote here, none of the eight international experts and nine legal experts selected are opposed to assisted suicide. But notably absent from the list is Canada. Where a law for “a small percentage” of sufferers with a few months to live paved the way for assisted suicide as a healthcare option: just last year, there were 15,300 “victims,” almost 5 percent of total deaths, among them obviously not just terminally ill individuals but also those with simply “unmet social needs,” such as lack of housing or future prospects. And where soon, people suffering from mental health problems, like anorexia, will also be able to benefit from assisted suicide.
While waiting to roll down the same slippery slope, the UK is busy removing the barriers of the law before it even comes into force.
