Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
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| Kevin Yuill |
This past year has exposed the moral bankruptcy of the ‘assisted dying’ lobby. Dignity in Dying placed ads on the London Underground that gleefully celebrated people taking their own lives. Times columnist Matthew Parris called for legalising assisted suicide in order to cull the elderly. We witnessed the unveiling of the dystopian Sarco ‘suicide pod’. There can now be no doubt: far from being built on compassion, the ‘assisted dying’ movement is built on a blatant disregard for human life.Kevin Yuill taught American studies at the University of Sunderland. His book, Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation, is published by Palgrave Macmillan.
The low point of this year arrived in November, with the parliamentary vote on legalising assisted suicide in England and Wales. After having fewer than three weeks to consider Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, and fewer than five hours to debate it, MPs voted by 330 to 275 in favour of it.
This vote was the culmination of years of emotionally manipulative propaganda, dominated by assisted-suicide lobby groups like Dignity in Dying. The issue of ‘assisted dying’, as proponents euphemistically call it, was brought back to the centre of political discussion late last year, when former TV presenter Esther Rantzen revealed that she was suffering from terminal lung cancer and might ‘buzz off’ to Dignitas in Switzerland. She called for a change in the law, complaining that, as it stands, police could prosecute her loved ones if they accompany her.
Keir Starmer, then leader of the opposition, was quick to agree with Rantzen. ‘I am an advocate to change the law’, he said. He went on to promise Rantzen that, should Labour win the upcoming General Election, he would give MPs a free vote on legalising ‘assisted dying’. Once Labour got into power in July, Starmer made good on that promise. In October, Leadbeater, Labour MP for Spen Valley, introduced her assisted-dying private members’ bill to parliament.
Starmer’s office successfully convinced many of the 231 new Labour MPs that this vote was simply about the principle, rather than the bill itself. They were reassured that there would be a chance to vote again on the details of the bill, which even some assisted-suicide advocates acknowledged had been poorly drafted.
Now, Leadbeater is handpicking a committee to consider amendments to the legislation. Unsurprisingly, this committee noticeably lacks critics of assisted suicide, or indeed MPs with medical training. So we shouldn’t put much stock in its ability to smooth out the bill’s many loopholes – such as potentially allowing anorexics and people with Type 1 diabetes to access assisted suicide, despite Leadbeater’s reassurances to the contrary.
The notion that assisted suicide has widespread public support is also misleading. Polls show that while most people back ‘assisted dying’ in principle, they have little understanding of what it entails in practice. The ‘assisted dying’ campaigners’ linguistic games, aimed at disguising the fact that they are advocating for state-sanctioned suicide, appear to have paid off. One poll conducted ahead of the vote in parliament found that 10 per cent of Brits thought ‘assisted dying’ meant access to hospice care. Forty-two per cent thought it meant the right to stop medical treatment, which is already legal. When people were informed that ‘assisted dying’ means helping people to kill themselves, support plummeted to just 11 per cent.
We need only to look to Canada to see what disasters await the UK, should Leadbeater’s bill become law. This year, Canada released its fifth annual report on its medical assistance in dying (MAID) programme, which has been in place since 2016. In that time, 60,301 Canadians received either euthanasia or assisted suicide. Last year, the number of total MAID procedures was more than 15 per cent higher than the year before. Euthanasia now accounts for nearly one in 20 deaths in Canada. Half of those who die at the hands of MAID are aged under 75.
Plenty of stories came out of Canada this year that showed the inevitable horrors that legalising assisted dying creates. In one case that came to court, a father desperately tried to stop the assisted death of his 27-year-old daughter, who, despite being diagnosed with ADHD and autism, was otherwise physically healthy as far as he knew. Tragically, many more such stories are bound to follow when, in 2027, the criteria for MAID will expand to include those suffering solely from mental illness. Despite Leadbeater’s claims that her bill will contain plenty of ‘safeguards’ to stop UK law expanding to these levels, anyone who has been paying attention to places like Canada knows that the slippery slope is very real.
You can also look to the Netherlands, where assisted suicide has been legal since 2002. This year, there was a spate of Dutch cases in which physically healthy people were euthanised. Twenty-nine-year-old Zoraya ter Beek and 35-year-old Jolanda Fun were both killed because they suffered from severe depression.
Leadbeater would have us believe that such a situation is impossible in the UK. Earlier this year, she claimed that ‘wherever [an assisted-dying] law has been introduced… and it’s got strict, limited criteria and proper safeguards and protections, it hasn’t been widened’. This is demonstrably untrue. There is not a single jurisdiction in which assisted suicide has been legalised where the eligibility criteria have not been relaxed or expanded. We have no reason to believe that the UK would be the exception to this rule.
Despite the depressing news on assisted suicide, there are still rays of light. That 275 MPs voted against the bill is in many ways incredible, given the political pressure exerted by Starmer and his large majority. Meanwhile, among the general public, polling shows that most Brits have their doubts about ‘assisted dying’.
In 2025, the debate must continue. And this time, it must be centred on facts, thoughtfulness and human dignity.
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