Britain and Scotland will vote on assisted suicide bills in May

The Care NOT Killing Alliance in the UK sent an update urging supporters to contact elected representatives in (London UK) and in Scotland, to oppose the assisted suicide bills. The message stated:

Dear Friends:

We learned this week that the Leadbeater Bill’s Report Stage will now commence on Friday 16 May, a delay of several weeks, while the Scottish Daily Express reported today that ‘a vote on the private member's Bill from Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur is expected in the first two weeks of next month, and it must take place before May 23.’

In these next few weeks, we all have an opportunity to influence politicians as they weigh up the risks posed by these bills, and while it’s easy to be cynical, a great many are giving this serious and sincere thought. As SNP MSP Michelle Thomson said today:

‘I started looking at it and instinctively, I was in favour of it. I saw my mother die of cancer and all that she went through… But I’m not making decisions just for my mother, I’m not making it just for me, I’m making decisions for huge sectors of society and that’s why I hope that everybody will look into the matter really carefully and consider all these constituent groups too.’

Care NOT Killing urges their supporters to contact elected representatives. The letter continues:

It was reassuring to hear that Health Secretary Wes Streeting will once again vote against the Leadbeater Bill. Remember, he voted FOR a similar bill in 2015 — parliamentarians can and do change position in light of the evidence.

If the law did change, how would legalised assisted suicide sit alongside existing healthcare concerns? It was reported this week that:

‘Hospitals will receive an “incentive payment” for each patient they remove [from their waiting lists], and a payment cap of 5% of a trust’s waiting list is being scrapped, according to documents seen by the Guardian. It means there is no limit to the payments NHS trusts could receive for taking patients off their lists… The strategy is likely to raise concerns among patient charities that some people may be wrongly removed.’

The letter continues with Professor Kevin Yuill of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia commented:

‘Nothing bad could possibly come of [the Leadbeater Bill’s] provisions that doctors can bring the topic [of assisted suicide] up and that it will be outsourced to for-profit companies. Everything is fine!’

The letter then looks at what is happening in Canada:

Ultimately, what could healthcare look like a few years after legalisation, when the law has already been extended and people have become desensitised? Dr Ramona Coelho, a member of Ontario (Canada)’s MAiD Death Review Committee (MDRC), pointed this week to this story:

‘Mr. C, diagnosed with metastatic cancer, [who had] initially expressed interest in MAiD but then experienced cognitive decline and became delirious. He was sedated for pain management. Despite the treating team confirming that capacity was no longer present, a MAiD practitioner arrived and withheld sedation, attempting to rouse him. It was documented that the patient mouthed “yes” and nodded and blinked in response to questions. Based on this interaction, the MAiD provider deemed the patient to have capacity. The MAiD practitioner then facilitated a virtual second assessment, and MAiD was administered.’

‘If we truly value dignity, we must invest in comprehensive care to prevent patients from being administered speedy death in their most vulnerable moment, turning their worst day into potentially their last.’

They conclude their letter with a statement from former Peterborough MP Lord Jackson has written this week:

‘Vulnerable people across the UK require MPs to survey the horizon, assess the risks and legislate for the weakest. The Bill process so far has proven us to be inept in this. We must do better. Kim Leadbeater must do better. Objectively, this Bill deserves to fail.’

More articles on the topic: 

• British MP who supported assisted suicide is opposing the assisted suicide bill (Link). 
• The UK assisted dying bill gets more dangerous by the day (Link). 
• UK assisted suicide bill is losing support and can be defeated (Link). 
• Follow the money. Members of Scottish parliament accept money from? (Link).
• Scotland's assisted suicide bill is dangerous (Link).

The UK assisted-dying bill gets more dangerous by the day

This article was published by Spiked on March 1, 2025.

Kevin Yuill

By Kevin Yuill

Kim Leadbeater’s promise to create the ‘safest’ assisted-dying legislation in the world unravelled even further this past week, as MPs rejected yet another proposed safeguard to her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which would legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales.

Labour MP Rachael Maskell tabled [introduced] an amendment that would have required a patient to meet ‘with a palliative-care specialist for the purposes of being informed about the medical and care support options’ before an assisted suicide could proceed. In other words, they would have to consider options for alleviating their pain. Yet this most innocuous amendment was defeated by 15 MPs to eight on Tuesday.

This was hardly a surprise. Having been voted through in the House of Commons last November, the bill is now in the committee stage. Yet Leadbeater stacked the committee of MPs in her favour. Although the committee is supposed to ‘improve’ the bill, it has repeatedly thrown out sensible amendments.

Maskell’s amendment would have done nothing more than reassure terminally ill patients that there are alternatives to killing themselves. Given the severity of the decision, you would hope that the assisted-dying process would leave as many opportunities for patients to reconsider as possible.

As one observer noted on X, you currently have to undergo far more rigorous checks to be able to donate a kidney than Leadbeater envisages for an assisted suicide.

Conservative MP Danny Kruger, who leads a minority of cross-party MPs on the committee fighting Leadbeater’s bill, noted how important it is that ‘a patient has clearly understood their palliative-care options’ before choosing to end their own life. The assisted-suicide advocates on the committee took a very different view. Tory MP and supporter of the bill Neil Shastri-Hurst worried that requiring a consultation with a palliative-care specialist would ‘bog down the whole process with layer upon layer of bureaucracy’.

As far as the likes of Shastri-Hurst are concerned, the fewer obstacles in front of the proverbial man on the ledge, the better.

In order to try to keep up the pretence that assisted dying is a ‘compassionate’ cause, Leadbeater resorted to relaying emotional anecdotes. ‘There are cases where palliative care cannot meet a patient’s needs’, she said. ‘We have a lady in the public gallery this morning whose mother had a horrible death, having had ovarian cancer and mouth cancer; she had to have her tongue removed, so she could not eat and drink, and she essentially starved to death.’

This is certainly tragic, but it hardly makes sense as an argument. There will also be plenty of cases where palliative care can meet a patient’s needs.

Fellow Labour MP Stephen Kinnock was clearly less concerned with the optics when he complained that ‘the amendment would increase demand on palliative-care specialists’. He is right that the existence of patients demands doctors. But there is an undeniably sinister undertone whenever questions of money and resources raise their head in the assisted-suicide debate. Death, all too often, appears as the ‘cheaper’ option than healthcare or to assistance to carry on living.

The rejection of Maskell’s amendment is merely the latest in a long line of attempts to ensure the Leadbeater bill has as few meaningful safeguards as possible. So far, the committee has also voted down amendments to prohibit ‘encouraging’ someone towards assisted suicide, exerting ‘undue influence’ prompting someone to choose assisted suicide or ‘manipulating’ someone to choose assisted suicide. It has also rejected the requirement that a six-month diagnosis of a terminal illness must have ‘reasonable certainty’ before an assisted suicide approved. It has even rejected a request, backed by eating-disorder charities, for illnesses to not be regarded as terminal for the purposes of this law if they can be caused by stopping eating and drinking.

All these failed by 15 votes against and eight in favour, reflecting the bias of the committee, except for one, which lost 14 votes to nine.

This won’t be the end of it, either. Leadbeater’s ‘judge plus’ amendment, which has yet to be considered by the committee, will try to remove a safeguard originally included in the bill that would have required each assisted death to be signed off by a High Court judge. This was initially a big selling point for her bill, with more than 61 MPs citing it as a reason to vote in favour. Now, Leadbeater plans to replace the judge with ‘death panels’ of social workers, lawyers and psychiatrists.

Clearly, Leadbeater and her pro-assisted suicide colleagues are hell-bent on ramming this legislation through parliament, whether or not it is fit for purpose. Let us hope that enough MPs are paying attention to these insidious developments – and that they vote this disastrous bill down at the earliest opportunity.

Kevin Yuill, emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland and CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (HAASE).

Previous articles by Kevin Yuill:

• Why is the Labour Party putting assisted suicide ahead of social care? (Link)
• Why we need to kill the UK assisted dying bill (Link).
• No safe way to legalize euthanasia (Link).

Why is the UK Labour party putting assisted suicide ahead of social care?

This article was published by Spiked on January 14, 2025.

Elderly and disabled people need a national care service, not a national suicide service.

Kevin Yuill

By Kevin Yuill

The British government has announced a new commission that it hopes will build a ‘national consensus’ on social-care reform. Yet despite Labour’s talk of the ‘critical issues’ that face the social-care sector, the commission won’t deliver its first report until 2028, which is around the time of the next election. In other words, despite decades of debates, commissions and reports about social care, Keir Starmer and Co are kicking the can even further down the road. Plus, given the government’s already deep unpopularity, it may well be leaving the urgent problem of social care to whoever is next in power.

This offers an illuminating insight into Labour’s attitude towards the ill, elderly and disabled – particularly when contrasted with the government’s haste in legislating for assisted suicide. PM Starmer boasts an enormous parliamentary majority, and as a result has little trouble navigating the passage of bills. So why is Labour prioritising assisted suicide over social care?

After all, social care poses far fewer ethical concerns than assisted suicide. While MP Kim Leadbeater’s private members’ bill has already proven deeply controversial, a national consensus has long existed on the issue of social care. We all agree that care for elderly, ill and disabled people needs to be provided as widely as possible. The only real points of contention concern the amount of resources and public funds that should be allocated to this end, and how those funds should be raised.

The Leadbeater bill is far less straightforward. If it becomes law, it will fundamentally alter the UK’s moral terrain. By legalising ‘assisted dying’, it will transform the relationship between doctor and patient forever.

And this is far from the only problem with Leadbeater’s bill, which passed its second reading in the House of Commons back in November. Unlike assisted-suicide legislation in most other countries, the bill contains no conscientious-objection clause for doctors. In jurisdictions that have already legalised assisted suicide, only Canada, where euthanasia is now the fifth-leading cause of death, requires doctors to participate regardless of their views.

These details, and many others, bear thinking about – not least by our elected law-makers. But the assisted-dying bill was rushed through after just five hours of debate. Leadbeater herself betrayed a limited understanding of her own bill, and its implications, when she was arguing for it in parliament. MPs were given only 16 days to digest one of the longest private members’ bills in parliamentary history. What’s more, a committee stacked with assisted-suicide supporters and inexperienced MPs is now responsible for combing through the bill at break-neck speed.

The skewed priorities are grotesque. A third reading of Leadbeater’s shoddy legislation is already scheduled for April. Assisted suicide could be law by 2027, bringing in what Tory MP Danny Kruger has branded a ‘national suicide service’. Yet, at the same time, more than 10 and a half years after it was first proposed, a national care service looks no closer to becoming a reality.

It seems that this is a government keener on helping people to die than on ensuring they are cared for while they are still here. 

Kevin Yuill teaches American studies at the University of Sunderland. His book, Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation, is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Why we need to kill the UK assisted dying bill.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kevin Yuill

Kevin Yuill has written some excellent articles opposing assisted suicide. His latest article was published by Spiked on December 30, 2024 explaining the direction of the assisted suicide lobby and the need to kill the UK assisted suicide bill. Yuill wrote:

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.

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.

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.

Previous articles by Kevin Yuill:

• Ten myths about assisted suicide (Link).
• The dystopian horror of the Sarco Suicide pod (Link).
• No safe way to legalize euthanasia (Link).
• Why are Dutch doctors euthanizing young healthy women? (Link).
• UK Labour Party leader is wrong about assisted suicide (Link).

Ten myths about assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kevin Yuill

Kevin Yuill, who is an emeritas professor of American studies at the University of Sunderland and published a book, Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation outlines ten myths about assisted suicide that was published by Spiked on October 16, 2024. 

I will simply republish the 10 myths.

1) The British people overwhelmingly support ASE

The support rate for ASE, we have been told over the years, is ‘more than 90 per cent’. The assisted-dying movement leans heavily on a supposedly supportive public to justify itself.

However, support has cooled as of late. More in-depth polling shows that British people are actually deeply ambivalent about legalising ASE. A poll commissioned earlier this year by the group Living and Dying Well found that legalisation came 22nd out of 23 issues in terms of importance to voters, only beating ‘regional devolution’. It also showed that, out of 54 per cent of those who gave an opinion on ASE (nearly a fifth of respondents put ‘don’t know’), most respondents favoured it in principle but didn’t think it was safe or practical.

An even more recent poll this month found that, while 63 per cent of British people favour legalising assisted dying, less than half (45 per cent) want their MP to vote for the law. A majority also say they don’t know enough about how it would work in practice to support a change in the law. Even a poll commissioned by pro-ASE campaign group Dignity in Dying this year found that fewer than half of all Britons wanted their MP to vote for ASE.

2) Assisted dying is not suicide

‘Assisted dying’ sounds much more pleasant than ‘assisted suicide’. But if a doctor hands you a gun and you shoot yourself, we all know that you would be committing suicide. If she hands you a rope and you hang yourself, that’s suicide. Yet if you have six months left to live and she hands you deadly poison and you ingest it knowingly, we are meant to believe that this is not suicide but ‘assisted dying’? ASE campaigners are desperate to hide the reality of what they want to legalise. 

3) Safeguards can ensure that ASE is safe and limited

Leadbeater said earlier this month that, ‘wherever [an assisted-dying] law has been introduced… and it’s got strict, limited criteria with proper safeguards and protections, it hasn’t been widened’. She claimed there is no danger of a ‘slippery slope’. The trouble is, proponents of ASE tend to spin the globe, cherry-picking their examples of supposedly ‘safe’ assisted-dying laws.

They invariably ignore the Netherlands, where at least 39 people with learning disabilities or autism have been euthanised. They also turn a blind eye to Belgium, which has changed the law to include children. Most egregiously, the assisted-dying camp ignores Canada, pointing instead to Oregon, where ASE has been legal since 1997. ‘See?’, they say, ‘the safeguards work’. Except when they don’t.

4) Eligibility criteria do not expand.

There is no jurisdiction where ASE has been legalised where the eligibility criteria have not been relaxed. In Oregon, the definition of what constitutes a ‘terminal’ illness has been massively expanded – so much so that it can include mental illnesses like anorexia. Similarly, the ‘cooling off’ period for patients to change their minds has been cut from 14 days to less than 48 hours. Non-residents are now also allowed to apply for assisted suicides.

In Canada, the slide down the slippery slope has been even more dramatic. The Canadian government introduced its medical assistance in dying (MAID) programme in 2016 for those who were close to death and suffering unbearably. Just a few years later, in 2020, the eligibility criteria were expanded to those whose death was not ‘reasonably foreseeable’. A further vote to extend euthanasia to all those suffering from mental illness will take place in 2027.

This all follows a grim but undeniable logic. If death is redefined as medical treatment, how can it be denied to anyone who is ‘unbearably suffering’?

5) This is not a threat to the vulnerable

Assisted-suicide advocates insist there is no truth behind the claim that those at the margins of society will be placed most at risk from legalisation. It tends to be the educated and wealthy who opt for an assisted suicide, they say. Apparently, this proves that ASE is a freely made ‘choice’.

However, there are now numerous reports from Canada about people who asked for MAID because they were poor, homeless or could not afford medical treatment. Recent research found that at one hospital in Ontario, 58 per cent of requests for MAID were from people belonging to a lower socio-economic status (SES), despite the fact that only 39 per cent of the hospital’s catchment were ‘low SES’.

The story is similar in Oregon, where the number of yearly assisted deaths increased from 16 in 1998 to 278 in 2022. Over this time, patients’ health-funding status changed from predominantly private (65 per cent) to predominantly government-supported (80 per cent). This implies that, when ASE is first legalised, it is indeed taken up mostly by the comfortably off seeking a bespoke death. But it doesn’t take long before those who have little money or prospects start to view ASE not as a choice, but as their only option.

Not unlike eugenics at the turn of the last century, ASE is cleansing society of those who are shamefully seen as a drag on the economy.

6) This is about freedom

‘Each one of us should be free to make our own decisions about how we live – and die – as long as we don’t harm others’, says Professor Alice Roberts, vice-president of Humanists UK. This simple-minded argument is a recipe for approving – and presumably assisting in – any attempt to commit suicide, for whatever reason.

Surely the same logic could also apply to any kind of ‘consensual’ lethal violence. Should we not be able to engage in duelling, which kills only those who have consented to it? What about consensual cannibalism? Such arguments stretch the ‘harm principle’ beyond all recognition. Death, quite literally, destroys one’s freedom. 

7) If you had experienced a bad death of a loved one, you would support ASE

This is a grotesque and insulting claim. Many of us have experienced bad deaths of loved ones and we still think legalising ASE is a horrible idea. This oft-repeated argument reveals that ASE advocacy is an emotional response to an awful situation, not a considered and thoughtful reflection about what should happen in law.

8) Britain’s suicide laws are unfit for purpose

According to Dignity in Dying and its supporters, the Suicide Act 1961 is ‘dangerous and cruel’, a ‘blanket ban’ on compassionate responses to the dying and a ‘broken law’. Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee once dramatically called the Suicide Act an ‘instrument of state torture’.

This is far from the truth. The Suicide Act decriminalised suicide, meaning that those who attempt it would no longer be prosecuted. It does, however, make it illegal to aid someone else’s suicide. This strikes a good balance. It signals not only that suicide is wrong and we ought to discourage it – but also that those who attempt suicide deserve our sympathy, not criminalisation. In other words, we do not want to punish those who feel they want to end their lives, but nor do we want to push the proverbial man teetering on the bridge.

How many people are even prosecuted under this supposedly cruel act of state torture? According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), between 1 April 2009 and 31 March 2024, 187 assisted-suicide cases were referred to the police. Of these 187 cases, 127 were not proceeded with by the CPS and 36 cases were withdrawn by the police. Six cases are ongoing, four were successfully prosecuted. Eight were instead prosecuted as homicide and one case was acquitted. Even under our current laws, no one is now in prison for participating in a genuine mercy killing.

9) Britons suffer terrible deaths because ASE is not legal

Dignity in Dying’s own figures suggest that your chances of dying a terrible death are pretty small. ASE advocates make much of the fact that 17 people a day ‘suffer’ as they die – but that’s just one per cent of all daily deaths. In one report, Dignity in Dying follows this stat up with a dramatic flourish, saying that some ‘will retch at the stench of their own body rotting. Some will vomit their own faeces. Some will suffocate, slowly, inexorably, over several days.’ Dignity in Dying was forced to withdraw the video version of this report after Hospice UK said the film was ‘sensationalist and inaccurate’.

In any case, legalising ASE does not guarantee a ‘good’ death. A 2022 BMJ article found that, in the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been legal for more than 20 years, many dying patients still suffer pain and / or restlessness in their final moments. 

10) There is no slippery slope

When I wrote the first iteration of this list for spiked 20 years ago, we lacked any real data on ASE. Now, we have extensive evidence from Oregon, Washington, Canada, the Netherlands and elsewhere. As a result, it is very difficult to maintain the idea that, once legalised, ASE will not expand, both in terms of numbers and ever-widening criteria.

In Canada, within less than a decade, euthanasia went from being a rare exception to something that ended the lives of an average of 36 people every day. More than four times as many people end their lives through ASE than through regular suicide.

The numbers dying have continually increased in every jurisdiction where ASE has been legalised. California has recently experienced a jump in cases. Belgium has gone from 235 deaths in 2003 to 3,423 in 2023. In the Netherlands, euthanasia increased from four per cent of all deaths in 2022 to five per cent in 2023.

Yes, the slippery slope is very real, although this isn’t even the most apt metaphor. We should think of legalising ASE as opening the floodgates to something deeply sinister.

Previous article by Kevin Yuill: 

• No safe way to legalise (Link). 
• Why are Dutch doctors euthanising healthy young women (Link). 
• UK Labour party leader is dead wrong about assisted suicide (Link).
  

Zoom event with Kevin Yuill. Canada and the UK euthanasia debate on Monday September 16.

As the UK debates euthanasia. Canada's euthanasia reality is relevant.

Kevin Yuill

Register in advance for this meeting: (Registration Link). After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing the link to join the meeting.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) is hosting a Zoom event on Monday September 16 at 12 noon (Eastern time) with Kevin Yuill.

Kevin Yuill is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland and CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (HAASE). Yuill is also the author of the book: Assisted suicide: The Liberal, Humanist case Against Legalization.

Yuill is a world leader in opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide and is working with several groups to prevent the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Britain, Scotland, Ireland, etc.

Alex Schadenberg

Yuill and Schadenberg will discuss the debate and proposed legislation to legalize euthanasia in the UK and how Canada's euthanasia reality is relevant to the UK debate.

Register in advance for this meeting: (Registration Link)

Some of the articles by Kevin Yuill: (Articles Link).

The dystopian horror of the Sarco suicide pod

This article was published by Spiked on August 13, 2024

Kevin Yuill

By Kevin Yuill

Yuill is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland and CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (HAASE).

This creepy death capsule reveals the dark heart of ‘assisted dying’.

Introducing the Sarco suicide pod, a gleaming and futuristic-looking death machine. The Sarco, short for ‘sarcophagus’, is the real-life, 21st-century version of critic William Archer’s fictional street-corner slot machines, ‘by which a man could kill himself for a penny’.

The Sarco, a 3D-printed death capsule, was developed a few years ago by Dr Philip Nitschke, founder of assisted-suicide advocacy organisation Exit International, and engineer Alexander Bannink. First unveiled in 2019, the Sarco works by filling its chamber with nitrogen and reducing oxygen levels rapidly once a button is activated from inside. The process would allow a person to lose consciousness and die in approximately 10 minutes. It’s cheap, at just $20 a pop. It’s disability-friendly, in that it can also be activated by voice, a blink or a gesture. It’s also environmentally friendly, serving as a coffin as well as a suicide pod.

Nitschke sees the Sarco as empowering. He claims it will make assisted suicide as unassisted as possible – or as he put it in 2022, ‘You really don’t need a doctor to die’.

Last month, the Sarco was about to serve its first customer, a terminally ill Australian man, in Valais, Switzerland. But after the news broke, a precautionary ban was issued on the Sarco’s use.

The precautionary ban is not a surprise. Very few support the use of the Sarco, even among those who generally campaign for the ‘right to die’. This is a little perplexing at first glance. After all, you would think champions of assisted dying would be all over the Sarco pod (if not actually in it). But they’re not. Even in Switzerland, a nation with some of the most lax assisted-dying laws in the world, established right-to-die organisations have opposed it. As a spokesperson for life-ending clinic Lifecircle said in 2021, ‘there is no human warmth with this method’.

It’s the same story in the UK. Dignity in Dying, the well-funded campaign group for legalising assisted dying, may claim to share Nitschke’s dream of making assisted dying as unassisted as possible – ‘Dying people not doctors in control’, states Dignity in Dying on its website. But it has also come out in opposition to the Sarco. As Professor Stephen Duckworth, a campaigner closely associated with Dignity in Dying, stated in 2021, he could not support the Sarco. ‘Nor am I aware of any credible assisted-dying campaigner who does’, he sniffed. Apparently it ‘deprives users of human connection’. It is the ‘antithesis of what the choice of assisted dying represents’.

What is it about the Sarco that provokes such a reaction among assisted-dying campaigners? At $20, it’s much cheaper than other forms of assisted dying. Above all, it seems to give people the very thing assisted-dying champions claim to support – the right to choose. So why do they reject the very innovation that meets their objectives?

The reason is simple. It’s because the Sarco exposes the horrors of euthanasia that hide behind kind-sounding words like ‘assisted dying’ or the ‘right to die’. It makes it all too clear that death could become cheap, easy and accessible should we decide to go down this path.

The Sarco offers a glimpse into a dystopian future that we desperately need to reject. However unwittingly, the near-universal repulsion it has elicited has done society a great service.

Further articles on this topic:

• Nitschke's suicide business gets US tax deductible status (Link).
• The media are promoting Nitschke and Sarco again (Link).
• Switzerland has not approved suicide pod (Link).

No safe way to legalise euthanasia

Kevin Yuill, emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland and CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (HAASE), wrote an article, published in Spiked on June 18, 2024.

by Kevin Yuill

For the first time in history, both main candidates in a UK General Election are openly in favour of legalising assisted suicide or euthanasia (ASE). Whether Labour or the Conservatives win in July, the Suicide Act 1961 will likely be called into review.

Last week, prime minister Rishi Sunak was asked by reporters at the G7 summit in Italy if he would vote for a change in the law on ‘assisted dying’. He replied: ‘I’m not opposed to it, in principle, and it’s a question of making sure the safeguards are in place and are effective.’

This may be a moot point, given that Sunak is trailing Labour leader Keir Starmer by 20 points in the polls. Besides, Sunak’s position was carefully couched. Rather than giving his full-throated support, he said he is ‘not opposed’. But that didn’t stop Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, from being able to say that, whoever gets in, ‘neither are opposed to reform’ of the UK’s current ban on ASE.

Perhaps the one thing we know about the infamously slippery Starmer is that he has a track record of supporting ASE. In March this year, he said was personally in favour of legalisation and he promised that MPs would get a free vote on it in the next parliament. Still, even he said that any change in the law must be accompanied by ‘safeguards with teeth to protect the vulnerable’ from abuse. These imagined safeguards are certainly doing a lot of heavy lifting. But could they actually work?

Looking at the evidence, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the only ‘safeguard’ that really works or lasts is the present law, which prevents ASE entirely. In every country where ASE is legal, the safeguards have fallen rapidly and initially low numbers of assisted deaths have surged.

Just look at the example of Australia, where ASE is largely legalised. Since legislation was passed in 2017, we have heard a constant clamour for more ‘improvements’ in the law, as pro-euthanasia organisation Go Gentle Australia disingenuously phrases it. What this really means is expansions of the current eligibility criteria. Last week, Australian publication the Age complained that, in the state of Victoria, many of the 68 safeguards that had reassured Victorians that ASE would be safe ‘are now obsolete and severely limit access’. The Age insisted that doctors should be allowed to initiate conversations about euthanasia and called for the removal of other ‘unnecessary hurdles’ to ASE. It is not difficult to see how this could lead to vulnerable people being pressured into accepting an assisted death.

Even in the US state of Oregon – which proponents of ASE like to hold up as evidence that safeguards work – the minimum period between a request for an assisted suicide and a patient’s death was reduced from 14 days to 48 hours in 2021.

Everywhere that ASE has been legalised, the eligibility criteria has ended up expanding. As psychiatrists Mark Komrad and Annette Hanson note in the Psychiatric Times this month, ASE legislation begins ‘with the “low-hanging fruit” of end-stage or terminal illness and gradually broadens’ to encompass other non-physical illnesses or conditions.

In Colorado, there have been cases where people have been helped to die because of anorexia. Dutch law similarly allows ASE for a variety of non-physical ailments, extending even to allow the killing last month of a physically healthy 29-year-old who suffered from severe depression. In the Netherlands in 2010, there were two cases of ASE involving psychiatric suffering. In 2023, there were 138, making up 1.5 per cent of the 9,068 euthanasia deaths.

In Canada, ASE was legalised in 2016 under the medical assistance in dying (MAID) programme. This was initially only intended for people whose deaths were ‘reasonably foreseeable’. But a court decision forced the government to expand its criteria effectively to all those with a permanent disability.

Safeguards simply do not work, even when they supposedly have ‘teeth’. When legalised, ASE rapidly turns death into a form of treatment for anyone deemed to be living an ‘inconvenient’ life – from the mentally unwell to the physically disabled.

The only good news is that, after 4 July, there will be a debate both in and outside of parliament. We should use this opportunity to counter the emotional appeals of our political class with the tragic realities of places where ASE is legal. Legalising assisted suicide is not so much a slippery slope as a moral precipice.

Why are Dutch doctors euthanising healthy young women?

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kevin Yuill

Kevin Yuill, who is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland and CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (HAASE) was published in Spiked on April 18, 2024 is asking the question: Why are Dutch doctors euthanising healthy young women?

Yuill begins his article by telling the stories of Yolanda Fun and Zoraya ter Beek:

Jolanda Fun is scheduled to die next week on her 34th birthday. As such, she has been able to prepare the funeral invites in advance. ‘Born from love, let go in love’, reads the card. ‘After a hard-fought life, she chose the peace she so longed for.’

Fun, who lives in North Brabant in the Netherlands, explained why she wants to die in an interview with The Sunday Times last week. Though she is physically healthy, she feels constantly ‘sad, down, gloomy’. At age 22, she was diagnosed with a litany of mental-health problems and has since run the gamut of therapies. Consequently, she has never been able to hold down a job. When a counsellor told her two years ago that she could be euthanised, she decided this was the only option left for her. ‘I want to step out of life’, she explains. 

Fun has no doubt had a difficult life. She suffers from an eating disorder, recurrent depression, autism and mild learning difficulties. But to suggest suicide as a cure to these problems is as good as giving up on her.

Shockingly, Fun’s case is not all that unique in the Netherlands. Earlier this month, it was reported that another young, physically healthy Dutch woman is seeking euthanasia on mental-health grounds. The 28-year-old Zoraya ter Beek is scheduled to die in May on account of her depression and autism.

Yuill then explains how euthanasia for psychiatric reasons has expanded.

Most cases of assisted suicide or euthanasia (ASE) in the Netherlands – the first country to legalise the practice in 2002 – involve people with terminal illnesses. But ASE for psychiatric reasons is on the rise. In 2010, only two people sought euthanasia on the grounds of mental health. That increased to 68 in 2019 and to 138 last year.

Psychiatric euthanasia remains divisive in the Netherlands. Many Dutch people who were initially in favour of ASE are reconsidering their positions because of it. Boudewijn Chabot is one such critic, a psychiatrist who actually received a suspended sentence for carrying out the first reported case of euthanasia for psychiatric reasons in the 1990s. Now Chabot worries that the legalisation of ASE has gone too far. ‘I am not against euthanasia in psychiatry or severe dementia’, he writes. ‘[But] I am extremely concerned that doctors are trying to solve social misery due to lack of treatment and care, by opening the gate to the end.’

Yuill continues:

There is no doubt that the Netherlands’ laws on euthanasia have harmed the most vulnerable. In 2023, a study found 39 cases of ASE in the Netherlands involved people with either learning disabilities or autism, or both. Of these, nearly half were under 50. Although many of these patients also suffered from physical co-morbidities that led to them seeking out ASE, 21 per cent of them did so primarily for psychiatric reasons. They cited characteristics associated with their conditions, such as anxiety, loneliness, difficulty in making friends and connections, and not feeling they had a place in society.

A growing number of people with dementia are also seeking euthanasia in the Netherlands. In fact, 42 per cent of Dutch GPs reported requests for euthanasia from people with dementia. Of those, patients cited feeling like an emotional burden as the most frequent reason. Disturbingly, just under 43 per cent of these patients said they felt pressured by relatives.

Yuill then warns countries that are debating euthanasia to consider the grim reality:

In Scotland, where the government is currently considering a bill to allow assisted suicide, support for legalisation has consistently dropped since 2019. Perhaps this has something to do with the neverending stream of horrific stories emerging from countries where ASE is legal. In Canada, people seek out euthanasia to solve poverty, homelessness and lack of medical care. In the Netherlands, therapists seem to have given up on treating the mentally unwell, recommending euthanasia instead. 

Yuill ends his article by explaining 

The brutality of encouraging those like Jolanda Fun to die destroys the argument that ASE is about compassionately relieving end-of-life suffering. Fun herself is unsure whether or not things could have been different for her, had she received the right treatment. ‘They say you are born like this’, she says, ‘but I really think the services should have listened a bit better’.

This is where treating death as a form of medicine has led to. Medical professionals should be telling suicidal people that life can get better, not encouraging them to give up. Allowing euthanasia on psychiatric grounds tells those suffering with a mental illness that their lives are not worth living. This is not compassionate or dignified. It is evil. 

More articles on this topic:

• Autistic 28-year-old Dutch woman is scheduled to die by euthanasia (Link).
• Netherlands 2023 euthanasia report - A 20% increase in euthanasia for mental illness (Link).

UK Labour Party leader is dead wrong about assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kevin Yuill

Kevin Yuill who is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland and CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (HAASE) wrote an article, that was published in Spiked on March 14 challenging Keir Starmer, the leader of the UK Labour party who announced that he would introduce an assisted suicide bill, if elected in the next UK election. 

I just completed meetings with elected representatives in Scotland and the Isle of Man. While in Scotland, the Keir Starmer news came out.

Yuill's states in his article in the Spiked:

He made the pledge earlier this week, in response to Esther Rantzen, the veteran broadcaster who is also a vocal advocate for assisted suicide. Starmer told her: ‘I’m personally in favour of changing the law. I think we need to make time. We will make the commitment.’

Yuill writes that Starmer has flip flopped on issues in the past, but Starmer is known to support assisted suicide. Yuill wrote:

He has, after all, continuously supported legalising assisted suicide. As an MP in 2015, he voted in favour of it. And when he was director of public prosecutions, in 2010, he issued guidelines that strongly discouraged prosecutions against anyone who helped a terminally ill person end their life. Indeed, his position on assisted dying may be the only consistent one he has ever held.

Yuill then explains how Starmer's promised "safegaurds" are an illusion:

Starmer has promised that any change in the UK law must be accompanied by ‘safeguards with teeth to protect the vulnerable’ from abuse. But herein lies the fundamental problem with legalising assisted dying. In almost every country where it has been legalised, the safeguards that were initially put in place have been trampled on. Like a cancer, the so-called right to die inevitably spreads.

Yuill then explains how Canada's safeguards have been withdrawn.

Canada is perhaps the most grim example of this. In less than a decade, its Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) programme has expanded to a dystopian degree. When it was first introduced in 2016, euthanasia was only legal when a patient’s death was ‘reasonably foreseeable’. Now, just about anybody suffering from an illness or disability can access a state-sponsored death. In 2027, the law is set to expand further still to allow those suffering with mental illness to apply for MAID.

Yuill explains that expanding assisted suicide laws is a feature of legalization:

Expansion of the criteria is a feature, not a bug, of assisted-suicide laws. Once the right to die is enshrined in law, safeguards are almost immediately called into question by those who feel they are suffering unbearably, but do not qualify under the existing rules. There’s a grim logic to it. When death comes to be seen as the best treatment for suffering, then how can the state deny it to anyone who suffers?

Yuill provides specific examples of expansion of the laws from Canada and the Netherlands:

As a result, some truly disturbing cases have emerged from the places where assisted dying is legal. In Alberta, Canada, a 27-year-old autistic woman was approved for MAID earlier this year. Her father has gone to court to try to stop her from being euthanised. He has argued that, aside from her autism diagnosis, she is perfectly healthy. Despite this, two doctors signed off on her death. The case is still ongoing.

It’s a similar story in the Netherlands, where assisted suicide and euthanasia have been legal since 2002. Between 2012 and 2021, 39 people suffering only from autism and / or other intellectual disabilities have been euthanised. Nearly half of them were under 50.

One such case was an autistic man in his twenties. His record said that he was a victim of regular bullying, that he ‘had felt unhappy since childhood’ and that he ‘longed for social contacts but was unable to connect with others’. On this basis, and on his request, his doctor euthanised him.

Yuill ends the article by encouraging Starmer to flip flop on assisted suicide.

The essential problem with assisted suicide is that it turns death into a ‘solution’ to life’s problems. It does not alleviate people’s suffering. It merely encourages them to seek death, as an alternative to decent medical treatment or proper social support. Keir Starmer ought to think twice before setting the UK down this path. For once, his flip-flopping would be more than welcome.

Previous articles by Kevin Yuill on euthanasia and assisted suicide. (Link to the articles)

What assisted suicide and the death penalty have in common

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Jacqueline Abernathy wrote an article this week titled: Civilized Societies Don't Execute or Euthanize Human Beings. Kevin Yuill, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland and CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (HAASE) also wrote an article that was published in Spiked titled: What assisted dying and the death penalty have in common.

Kevin Yuill

Yuill introduces his article by stating:

On 25 January, the US state of Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith. Thirty-six years on from being convicted of the ‘murder for hire’ killing of Elizabeth Sennett, the 58-year-old finally ‘answered for his horrendous crimes’, as Alabama governor Kay Ivey put it.

The execution was rightly condemned by liberals of all stripes. Activists, campaigners, members of the US Supreme Court and even the United Nations re-stated their opposition to the death penalty.

Yuill explains that the method for killing Smith was ‘nitrogen hypoxia’. Yuill quotes many of the outraged groups that stated:

‘Just the idea of using gas for executions is an affront to our community’, said Mike Zoosman, the co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty. Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights joined in the condemnation of Smith’s execution. Four independent UN monitors accused the US government and Alabama of pushing ahead with an experimental execution technique that would ‘result in a painful and humiliating death’. Maya Foa, the joint executive director of human-rights campaign Reprieve, asked rhetorically: ‘How many more prisoners must die agonising deaths before we see executions for what they really are: the state violently taking a human life?’

Yuill states that all of these groups that condemned the capital punishment death of Smith support assisted death. Yuill then compares assisted death to capital punishment:

In fact, the methods of killing in cases of assisted suicide bare an uncanny resemblance to those used for state-ordered executions. In Canada alone, there were 13,000 assisted deaths by lethal injection last year. In the 2000s, Dignitas in Switzerland even experimented with helium hypoxia, a very similar method to that used to kill Smith. Dignitas’s efforts resulted in the botched killings of one man and three women, because of ill-fitting masks.

Even the length of time it takes to die is comparable between assisted suicide and the death penalty. But while critics have described the 22 minutes it took Smith to die in Alabama as ‘agonising’, they say nothing about the 40-plus minutes it takes individuals to die through assisted suicide in Oregon.

Yuill challenges those who oppose capital punishment but support euthanasia:

Those who oppose capital punishment but support euthanasia will say that there’s a vital difference between the two. People choose to die in cases of euthanasia, they say, whereas criminals don’t choose to be executed. But this is not the clincher they think it is. About 10 per cent of those who are executed in the US are what are known as ‘volunteers’, insofar as they choose not to appeal their sentences and accept their fate. According to the logic of pro-euthanasia advocates, executions would be more justified in these cases. This highlights the weakness of the ‘choice’ argument as a justification for state-approved killing.

If we are serious about opposing capital punishment, we need to oppose the premeditated killing of a human being by the state in all circumstances. That means opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide with just as much vehemence as opposing the death penalty.

Supporters of capital punishment and state-sponsored euthanasia share a similarly low view of human life. They both see certain lives as being devoid of all value. We need to stop being selective, and start opposing state-approved killing in all its forms.

Thank you Professor Yuill for your consistent position.