MSP Liam McArthur’s assisted suicide bill for Scotland, tabled today, has been slammed by SPUC as constituting a “death warrant” for the vulnerable.
Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur finally tabled his Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill this Thursday. The Bill will be scrutinised by Holyrood and may undergo its first vote later this year.
The Bill’s text claims that assisted suicide may be granted to persons with “an advanced and progressive disease, illness or condition from which they are unable to recover and that can reasonably be expected to cause their premature death”.
However, SPUC warns that the Bill’s definition of terminal illness is so loose that it could potentially be interpreted to include any condition said to shorten life expectancy, such as alcoholism and other issues not generally recognised as “terminal”.
Moreover, the Bill provides little safeguards against vulnerable persons being pressured into suicide. The two medical practitioners who assess the applicant can only decide “to the best of my knowledge” if the person is not being coerced or being made to feel they are a burden on their families, caregivers or even the health service.
Nurses and pharmacists, and not only doctors, could also approve applications, according to the text of the Bill.
Furthermore, almost every extended member of the applicant’s family, as well as health professionals who have previously treated the person, MAY NOT witness the countersignature approval, meaning that the necessary witness might have little or no knowledge of the person whose life they are assisting to end.
A ‘slippery and “dangerous” bill that must be rejected
SPUC’s Michael Robinson, Executive Director (Public Affairs and Legal Services), said: “If approved, this Bill will be a death warrant for thousands of vulnerable Scots who will fall prey to the sheer vagueness and lack of safeguards of the legislation proposed today.
“Rather than allaying fears that such a law will bring about a ‘slippery slope’, the text is itself slippery. Indeed, the definition of ‘terminal’ in Liam McArthur’s Bill, far from being tight and to the point, is so loose that it could be interrupted to mean anything.
“We’ve already seen in Canada where such legislation leads: 13,241 state-sanctioned assisted suicides in 2022 alone, a shocking toll which includes several potentially wrongful deaths. Even Canadian veterans with PTSD have been offered assisted suicide.
“Once a dangerous law like this is introduced, the idea that some lives aren’t worth living and that people might be better off dead will soon turn into a pressure to ‘choose’ death that vulnerable people will not so easily be able to resist. The only true safeguard against this is not to legalise assisted suicide in the first place.”