By Simon Caldwell, Catholic Herald, May14, 2024
The leader of the UK’s Labour Party has stated his personal commitment to changing the law on assisted suicide and promised to bring forward a Bill to legalise the practice if he is elected Prime Minister in the forthcoming General Election.
Sir Keir Starmer made his pledge in a telephone conversation with Dame Esther Rantzen, a celebrity with lung cancer who is campaigning for a change in the law, which was filmed by ITV.
In the news report, Starmer is heard telling Rantzen: “I’m personally in favour of changing the law; I think we need time,” he says. “I will make time [for debate on a vote] if I am Prime Minister,” adding that he would “definitely” commit to a vote in the next Parliament:
“We will make that commitment. Esther, I can give you that commitment right now.”
Starmer indicates that he would not impose a Party whip on the Bill as he “doesn’t want to make this a Party political issue, it needs to be cross Party”.
A General Election is expected to be called as early as May 2024 and opinion polls predict a landslide victory for the Labour Party.
Campaigners for “assisted dying” – a euphemism for assisted suicide and euthanasia – have made 12 attempts to change the law since 1997. Each time, draft Bills have been dismissed by either the House of Commons or the House of Lords after issues of public safety were raised by opponents.
In the ITV interview, Starmer only refers directly to “the law” and doesn’t actually say either “assisted dying” or “assisted suicide”, though he responds to a question from the interviewer who uses the phrase “assisted suicide”.
In the last decade, euthanasia or assisted suicide has been legalised in a rising number of countries across the world, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, some parts of the United States and in some Latin American countries.
Last week, President Emmanuel Macron of France also unveiled his plans for an assisted suicide Bill which will be introduced in May 2024.
Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth told the Catholic Herald that he was “very disappointed” by the announcement by Starmer, who is likely to become Britain’s first avowedly atheist Prime Minister; his tenure would also be the first time a potential change to the law would be debated under a Prime Minister who personally favours assisted dying/assisted suicide being legal.
“Assisted dying is a euphemism,” the bishop said. “What it means is assisting people (to die) by lethal injection or otherwise to commit suicide. This runs against our deepest instincts.
“How can a doctor or nurse, committed to saving life, be expected to kill someone? Moreover, even with the best will in the world, the legislation will show itself to be fluid and in time will expand to cover more and more categories of people, such as infants or the mentally ill as has happened already in Belgium and Canada.”
Bishop Egan added: “Assisted suicide is a red-line issue. If crossed, we will be entering a very different – and frightening – world.”
Assisted suicide involves a patient ingesting a lethal cocktail prescribed by a doctor or other medical practitioner, whereas euthanasia involves a doctor directly injecting deadly drugs into patients to cause death by asphyxia. The drugs most commonly used are paralysing agents manufactured partly to execute Death Row prisoners.
Last month, a report into “assisted dying” by the parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee was criticised as “inaccurate” by the Oxford-based Ancombe Bioethics Centre, a Catholic institute, because it refused to heed widespread abuses wherever euthanasia and assisted suicide have been legalised.
Widespread evidence of the ineffectiveness of safeguards and the existence of an inevitable “slippery slope” to every increasing numbers of deaths by euthanasia and ever broadening criteria for eligibility have been well-documented in all countries which allow the practice.
In Canada, for example, doctors Ellen Wiebe and Stephanie Green declared that their combined killings of 700 patients was “the most rewarding work we have ever done”.
Nor did the parliamentary report heed evidence that palliative care services have suffered in jurisdictions where assisted suicide and euthanasia have been legalised, even though doctors from Oregon, Belgium and Canada have testified to the UK Parliament that such services have been adversely impacted.