High court ruling authorises euthanasia by omission, says SPUC

High court ruling authorises euthanasia by omission, says SPUC London, 6th December 2006 - The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), which has campaigned against euthanasia for many years, has condemned today's High Court ruling that food and fluids can be withdrawn from a brain-damaged woman. Anthony Ozimic, SPUC political secretary, commented: "Today's ruling is not about letting a terminally-ill patient 'die with dignity' when medical treatment has proved futile. The misleadingly named 'permanent vegetative state' is not a terminal illness - it is impossible for someone to die from so-called PVS. It is precisely because this woman is not dying that the court has been asked to authorise her intentional killing - euthanasia by omission. Dehydrating and starving someone to death is just as much intentional killing as giving them a lethal injection. "Next April the government's Mental Capacity Act will come into force, which will allow and in some cases force doctors to carry out the euthanasia by omission of non-dying patients in any type of mental incapacity. It is clear from government documents that the cost of caring for the mentally-incapacitated is a motivating factor behind the new law. We unreservedly condemn such fatal discrimination against the sick and the disabled."