The final year of
this current Parliament opened today with the Queen's Speech, in the wake of
which we expect Lord Falconer's 2013 Assisted Dying Bill to be retabled. In
Scotland, Holyrood's Health and Sport Committee are accepting evidence on Margo
MacDonald's Assisted Suicide Bill until Friday 6 June. And the ruling of nine
Supreme Court justices who sat last December on the Nicklinson case is expected
any day now. With more appalling evidence pouring in from abroad, this is one
of those weeks when the euthanasia threat is palpable.
Westminster
Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill,
first introduced in May 2013, fell at the close of the Parliamentary year last
month, but he is set to reintroduce his proposals in coming days, following the
State Opening of Parliament. Disability activists have initiated a petition
calling on David Cameron to act on his personal opposition to assisted suicide,
which we encourage you to sign; debate has been ongoing, and carer Colin Harte's
recent radio interview
is very much worth listening to.
Holyrood
Following the death
of Margo MacDonald in April, the Green MSP Patrick Harvie has assumed
responsibility for the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill. The Bill's underlying
principles constitute a counsel of despair, while a meeting of lawyers in Scotland
recently agreed
that 'the Bill as drafted... would be unworkable'. The Health and Sport
committee are taking evidence until 6 June: read the call for evidence here,
CNK's submission here
and our brief overview of the bill here.
Supreme Court
Despite most Supreme Court rulings being handed down around
three months after the relevant hearing, the nine justices who heard the
appeals in the cases of Nicklinson/Lamb and 'Martin' are yet to rule five and a
half months on. This, it is to be hoped, is a sign that the gravity of the
cases is being fully acknowledged. The ruling's delivery will be streamed live online; until
we know when, remind yourself of some of the key
questions.
Foreign news
Reports
last week suggest that Belgian euthanasia deaths rose 26.8% in 2013 to 1,816,
representing five people every day having their lives ended, and a Brussels
nurse has recently written
of 'what really happens in Belgium's healthcare system with euthanasia'.
The head of the regulatory commission, Wim Distelmans, who is already the
subject of high profile official complaints, has sparked controversy by
announcing an instructional
tour of Auschwitz. If you are concerned about the situation in Belgium,
please sign EPC Europe's petition
calling for the suspension of the euthanasia law there.
In Switzerland, meanwhile, extraordinary cases of
non-terminally/chronically ill patients undergoing assisted suicide are
increasingly becoming part of standard practice. EXIT, one of the more
prominent assisted suicide organisations, has recently announced
that it will now accept non-terminally ill elderly people, in a worrying but
sadly unsurprising move.
Care
Our Campaign Director, Dr Peter Saunders, raised over £5,000
for Help the Hospices running the London Marathon - you can still donate here. A number of very
positive reports have highlighted the value and dynamism of care for those with
terminal and progressive conditions, including a BBC feature on hospice care
and press coverage given to a new initiative concerning dementia.
There have however been less agreeable reports concerning
failings in care for elderly
and dying people,
further careless celebrity
endorsements of euthanasia and evidence of a
need for more frank discussion of death and dying. A challenge for all of us
is: how do we build up a culture of care which not only responds to the needs
and rightful expectations of those around us but which also guards against
attempts to offer death as a 'sensible alternative'?
In a foreword to a recent photo
project featuring dying people, Alain de Botton
wrote: 'The dying are the great appreciators... They notice the value of the
sunshine on a spring afternoon, a few minutes with a grandchild, another
breath… And they know what spoilt ingrates we are, not stopping to register the
wonder of every passing minute. They were once like us of course. They wasted
decades but now they are in a position to know of their folly and warn us of
our own.'
For Rosa Monckton, patron of Together for Short Lives
(the umbrella organisation for children's palliative care), charity fundraiser Stephen
Sutton was the epitome of de Botton's idea, and an example to us all.
Peter, the simple fact that you and your cronies have not been kidnapped and tortured for epic poetic justice is enough to prove that pro-choicers have the moral high ground here.
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