UK assisted suicide bill may expand beyond terminal illness.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Camilla Turner reported for The Telegraph on October 5 that MP's are lobbying Kim Leadbeater (MP) to expand the scope of her assisted suicide bill, beyond terminal illness, even before the bill has been released.

As many as 54 MP's (UK) are pressuring Leadbeater, to expand the assisted suicide bill beyond terminal illness. Turner reports:

As many as 38 Labour politicians, including 13 who hold government roles, are understood to back proposals for the bill to go further and to apply not just to the terminally ill, but more broadly to those “incurably suffering”.

They are among a cross-party group of 54 MPs calling for the scope of the bill to be widened, according to Humanists UK, which has long called for a change in the law. It is likely to raise fears over introducing ambiguity into who would be eligible for state-sanctioned euthanasia.

A key fear of those who oppose assisted dying is that too loose a definition of who qualifies could lead to people suffering from depression and other non-terminal health issues being allowed to take their own lives.

Backers of a change in the law say that it is inhumane to keep the terminally ill alive if they are experiencing unbearable suffering.

Nearly every euthanasia or assisted suicide law in the world has expanded beyond its original scope after legalization.

On June 8, 2024 I published an article explaining how nearly every US state that has legalized assisted suicide has expanded their law (Link). Similarly in Canada where the legalization of euthanasia for terminally ill people has expanded far beyond its original scope (Link)(Link).

My first concern is that the UK Labour government is giving priority to a bill that will legalize assisted suicide for terminally ill people. If the assisted suicide bill passes, the government, which is already being pressured to open the door to non-terminally ill people, will expand the application of the law based on the principle of equality.

Once a country legalizes assisted suicide, they are crossing the only clear line in the sand, that being, they are allowing the killing of their citizens. Once it is approved the law inevitably expands based on the principle of equality since it becomes untenable to deny assisted suicide to one group of citizens that are experiencing difficult physical or psychological health conditions when terminally ill people, who may have similar conditions, can be approved to be killed within the law.

The only way to prevent the expansion of assisted suicide is to prevent it from being legalized.