Letter to the British Parliament. Vote No to the assisted dying bill.

The Canadian experience proves that you should not legalize assisted dying.

By Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and Dr Paul Saba, Co-Founder of Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia and a Québec family physician.

Many people believe that the Edwards assisted dying bill will legalize a "limited" assisted dying law. In reality, the bill lacks effective definition to limit its application. Even so, the Canadian experience with legalizing assisted dying proves that the law will expand based on a lack of definition in the language of the law and the reality that, once legalized, restrictions in the law will be challenged based on equality. 

Canada’s original law (Bill C-14) appeared designed to limit assisted dying to people who were terminally ill by including the restriction that a person’s natural death must be reasonably foreseeable, a phrase that was never defined in the law. 

Even under the original law, which was more restrictive than Canada’s current law, Dr Paul Saba had a patient who wanted to die by euthanasia, but his patient had a wrong diagnosis. Dr Saba explains:

Dr Paul Saba

Let me share a personal experience. Eight years ago, one of my patients, Jim (a pseudonym), came to see me for a cough, thinking he had a cold. I ordered a Chest X-Ray. According to the radiologist’s report, Jim appeared to have lung cancer. I sat down with Jim and told him, “We need to do a CT scan immediately. You need to see a specialist. We need to do a bronchoscopy…”

Jim replied, “Dr Saba, I know you’re against assisted suicide, but you know what? I don’t necessarily agree with you.” I replied, "No, no. You need to go through all the steps of the diagnostic process, because this is only a preliminary diagnosis. Even if it is lung cancer, it’s a disease that can be treated today. There are new treatments available. It might not even be lung cancer.”

I spoke with the radiologist who had performed the lung CT scan; he told me, “We don’t know exactly what it is. It looks like lung cancer, but it could be lymphoma, which would be highly treatable. ”

Jim is an intelligent, well-informed man, an engineer, who thought he had a cold, only to be told he might have cancer. He could have resigned himself to an assisted death before even knowing 

what it was, since Canadian law allows a person to refuse all the testing necessary to confirm the diagnosis. He could have lost hope when the situation was still full of hope.

The power to move people to give up is one of the dangerous and misleading aspects of assisted dying. However, Jim is alive today because I was able to get his attention and persuade him that the situation was hopeful and that he should get more tests and undergo treatment. Today, eight years after diagnosis, investigations and treatment, he is happy to be alive with no further evidence of disease. 

Jim was finally diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a condition that is highly curable with targeted medical treatment.

Misdiagnosis is not uncommon. DP Medical reported in February 2025 that a 2023 study by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) estimated that misdiagnoses affect around one in 18 patients in primary and secondary care. The same study found that misdiagnosed cancers, strokes, and heart attacks were among the most serious cases, often leading to life-altering consequences or death.

Misdiagnosis is a strong reason to oppose assisted dying laws, but the biggest reason to oppose the Edwards bill is what it actually legalizes and what legalization will lead to over time.

Assisted dying is an act of killing a person, usually upon request, by prescribing a combination of lethal poison drugs to cause death. This is not a minor issue, as it requires medical professionals to be directly involved with the act of killing their patients.

Another issue is how these laws evolve over time. The Canadian experience shows how a law can move from assisted dying for the terminally ill, to assisted dying for the chronically ill to assisted dying for people with chronic mental illness as their sole criteria, to assisted dying by advanced request and to considerations of assisted dying for mature minors.

A recent parliamentary committee stated that the Canadian government should not extend assisted dying to people with chronic mental illnesses as their sole criteria. Dying with Dignity, an assisted dying lobby group, responded to the committee by launching a court case arguing that Canadians with mental illness as their sole criteria had a right to an assisted death.

Assisted dying is not what people think it is. It is about creating an avenue to kill people and legalizing assisted dying leads to extensions over time based on discrimination, as the restrictions in the law will be deemed to deny people equality under the law. 

Vote NO on the Edwards assisted dying bill while being committed to improving the care that everyone needs and deserves. 

Alex Schadenberg - Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Paul Saba - Co-Founder of the Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia

British government admits that disabled people may face ‘subtle pressure’ to choose assisted suicide, if bill passes

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

John Pring reported for the Disability New Service on September 3, 2026 that the British government admitted that disabled people may face 'subtle pressure' to choose assisted suicide if the assisted suicide bill becomes law. Pring reported that:

The impact assessment was published by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) last Thursday (August 28).

The assessment’s publication came on the same day that prime minister Andy Burnham wrote to Labour MPs to say he would not vote on the bill on 11 September because he did not want to “unduly influence the debate as prime minister”.

He had already told the media that he believed the funding crisis in palliative and social care should be fixed before there is any debate about legalising assisted dying.

And he has now also told ministers that as the government will remain neutral on the bill, they should “avoid being part of the public debate, and should not express views” about the implications of the bill for their own departments.

Pring reported that the government published three assessments of the assisted suicide bill on August 28.

On Thursday (28 August), DHSC and MoJ published three key documents that assess the “potential impacts” of the bill.

Their equality impact assessment of the bill accepts that disabled people “may be more susceptible to feeling as though they are a burden on those around them”, a key concern raised by campaigners opposed to legalisation.

The impact assessment says that this pressure “is not necessarily felt or applied by other people” but that disabled people “may feel subtle pressure due to attitudinal barriers or a lack of alternative appropriate services and support”, such as with the lack of access to palliative care.

It says these feelings of being a burden could also be caused by “structural pressures such as neglect, poverty and difficult living conditions”, while disabled people are twice as likely as non-disabled people to be victims of domestic abuse such as coercive behaviour.

And the equality impact assessment warns that factors such as high rates of poverty, poorer access to healthcare, lower quality care, and disproportionate levels of domestic abuse of black and Asian women could cause disproportionate numbers of minority ethnic people to choose an assisted death “to avoid financial hardship or escape abuse”.

It also highlights how older people, who are likely to be the main recipients of assisted dying, are “often dependent on those who care for them”, which puts them at increased risk of abuse and pressure to choose an assisted death.

And the assessment reports findings by the UN in 2021 that older people “may feel subtly pressured to end their lives prematurely”.

On November 29, 2024; the UK House of Commons voted 330 to 275 at second reading to support Kim Leadbeater's assisted suicide bill, a bill that was fatally flawed and died in the British House of Lords.

On June 17, 2026 Labour MP Lauren Edwards introduced a similar version to the Leadbeater bill that is scheduled to be voted-on at second reading on September 11, 2026.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is convinced that Edwards introduced a nearly identical assisted suicide bill as the Leadbeater bill in order to invoke The Parliament Acts, which allows the House of Commons to forgo approval from the House of Lords when passing two nearly identical bills within consecutive parliamentary sessions.

Fix how we care for the most vulnerable. No to assisted suicide.

The following article by Zubir Ahmad was published by the Guardian on August 25, 2026.

Usually we comment on an article, but Dr Zubir Ahmad it was better to simply republish this article. The British parliament will once again vote-on an assisted suicide bill on September 11, 2026. The new bill is nearly identical to the previous bill.

Dr Zubir Ahmad

By Dr Zubir Ahmad 

As a doctor, I have spent much of my professional life caring for people at some of the most vulnerable moments they will ever face. I have seen the anxiety that surrounds the prospect of dying, and the desperate wish of patients and families to avoid unnecessary suffering.

Naturally, we all want people facing the end of life to be treated with kindness and respect. But when considering the debate on assisted dying, true compassion demands that we ask a more fundamental question. What kind of society are we building if, before we’ve fixed the systems designed to care for people, we introduce a system designed to help them die? As a former health minister who has seen the system from the inside, I am able to say it is not ready or equipped to answer this question.

Andy Burnham has been right to raise this as a priority issue at the start of his tenure as prime minister. Speaking at a care home recently, he explained that assisted dying should not be introduced while Britain’s palliative care and social care systems remain under such strain. A choice between death without adequate care and a death prematurely self-induced is not a real choice.

Indeed, as parliament prepares for yet another vote on assisted dying in England and Wales on 11 September, I fear that the offering has been somewhat mis-sold to the public. A state-controlled medicalised dying process is still a process – one where there remain risks of complication and suffering. The reality of assisted dying is more complex than the promise of a perfectly controlled death.

Many people imagine a system where a person facing a terminal illness can choose the exact moment and manner of their death, free from distress. But the legislation does not and cannot provide that certainty. A patient who self-administers medication to begin the dying process may still experience complications. The process may take time; it may require medical intervention. It may not happen where or when the person imagined. The promise of absolute control can therefore become something different in practice: an appearance of choice that does not always deliver the agency people expect.

I am far from the only medical professional to be worried about the prospect of assisted dying being available on the NHS. Among those raising concerns about the bill’s dozens of flaws have been the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Complex Life and Death Decisions (CLADD) group from King’s College London, the Royal College of Pathologists, the British Geriatrics Society and numerous other medical bodies and care authorities. The same concern comes up again and again: is it really a “free choice” when palliative care and social support fall short?

A person’s wish to die does not happen in isolation from their circumstances. It can be shaped by whether they feel supported, whether they fear becoming a burden, whether their family is coping and whether they have access to the care they need. That is why the state of our care systems cannot be treated as a separate issue from assisted dying. Timely access to palliative and social care remains too often determined by where someone lives rather than what they need. For some families, excellent end-of-life support is available; for others, particularly in rural areas as well as constituencies experiencing high inequality, the experience is one of waiting, uncertainty and having to fight for services that should be guaranteed.

A Labour government founded the NHS on a principle that remains as important today as it was at its creation: that healthcare should be there when people need it most, regardless of their circumstances. A postcode lottery in care cannot be ignored while debating a new legal pathway for people at the end of their life.

In Scotland, this concern has been expressed clearly, and was an important reason why, in March, 85% of Labour MSPs voted against the legalisation of assisted dying in Holyrood. The bill introduced in Westminster by my colleague Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP for Spen Valley, in October 2024 did not fare much better: too many concerns about patient welfare meant the House of Lords would not rubber-stamp the flawed text. And yet, on 11 September, MPs will be faced with yet another vote on assisted dying before the care systems are improved to a level which even makes that debate appropriate. Andy Burnham has his priorities right: this is the wrong debate at the wrong time. This is why I, and many others, will be voting against this bill, in pursuit of comfort, dignity and appropriate care for people who are vulnerable and dying.

Zubir Ahmed MP is an NHS vascular and transplant surgeon, and served as the parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department of Health and Social Care from 6 September 2025 to 12 May 2026.

VSED is part of the assisted suicide agenda.

Gordon Friesen

By Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

One of our great friends and allies, Wesley J. Smith, has recently written about the British Medical Association's newly minted policy and other bioethics articles which require doctors to collaborate with patients who are attempting to kill themselves through hunger and thirst.

This practice is commonly euphemized as ‘voluntarily stopping eating and drinking’, which ungainly expression is then replaced with the more slick-sounding acronym ‘VSED’. However we must unfortunately note (as usual) that the most important facts of this matter are absent from that deceptive formulation: first, the primary fact of suicide does not appear at all; and second, a misleading confusion is suggested between this specific method, of suicide, and traditionally familiar practices of fasting.

To be clear on this score, our subject has nothing to do with fasting (even to the point of death). For our bodies are well adapted to suffer the naturally frequent periods of famine to which we have been exposed throughout our evolution.

That is what makes fasting so comparatively easy (as long as fluid intake is properly maintained). For after a brief period of normal hunger (familiar to all occasional fasters), our bodies literally hunker down to wait out the interruption of nourishment.

Indeed, dying of hunger takes approximately one day for every pound of fat on our bodies, followed by another day for every three pounds of muscle. Hence, suicide by fasting is relatively painless, but takes a very long time, which generally provides plenty of opportunity for second thoughts.

Deprivation of fluids, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. In this case, death follows in a few days only. And for that practical reason, our bodies are not adapted to quietly suffer thirst. Indeed, thirst is a biological emergency, and our bodies ring the alarm on this emergency through the communication of insufferable discomfort.

It is this unbearable discomfort, in turn, which death-friendly doctors happily propose to alleviate, through the provision of various medications (which also heavily impair critical thought). In other words: because suicide by dehydration is virtually impossible to endure, it is only the assistance of doctors which make such deaths possible, by numbing both the body and the brain.

For that reason, so-called ‘VSED’ is clearly an instance of assisted suicide, not mere comfort care and because doctors are professionally responsible for their acts in a way that ordinary people are not, it is also a form of medical homicide.

In truth, while so-called ‘VSED’ might appear very similar to terminal sedation, it is also much more problematic. For palliative sedation is only to be used in the most difficult of medical cases. But suicide by dehydration may be chosen, by any person, for any reason. It thus represents a truly radical departure from accepted norms, by providing suicidal persons with a voluntary entry point to the practical equivalent of palliative sedation, but without the need of medical justification. 

In reporting on the decision of the British Medical Association (to force the collaboration of doctors with this practice) the headline message has quite properly been centered upon the serious attack, thus produced, upon individual and institutional rights of conscience. For dissenting doctors, and institutions, are thus robbed of that crucial medical status, of independent moral agent, upon which all patients rely for proper care.

It is also worthwhile, however, to recall the importance of medically assisted suicide by dehydration, even in those jurisdictions where no such compulsion has yet been contemplated.

In the simplest of terms: so-called ‘VSED’ is definitely a form of medically assisted suicide, and yet its practice is legal in all States. Which means that even if you live in a State where assisted suicide is illegal, medically assisted suicide (VSED) is still being practised, in your State.

Furthermore, all of the terrible harms of medical homicide are enabled through this practice. For if there is nothing illegal about informing patients of the dehydration suicide option (and there is not) then there is similarly no check on any death-practitioner's ability to energetically market their product, and thus to professionally deliver as many people from the pains of human existence, as they possibly can.

In fact, unlike any other form of medical homicide (in the US or even in Canada) medically assisted suicide by dehydration is already available for dementia patients, through professionally solicited advance requests (similarly legal in all States).

Such, then, is the portrait of that formidable Trojan Horse, medically assisted suicide by dehydration (aka ‘VSED’).

Becoming aware of this practice, as yet another finger on the hand of medical homicide (and by no means the least of these) is a powerful first step in pushing back.

And while we may understand the zealous actions of fully devoted death-cult physicians, it is less easy to understand why our leaders, as in this latest British example, are so keenly committed to the promotion, and facilitation, of that extreme death agenda.

Disability groups: Open letter opposing assisted suicide

To Prime Minister Andy Burnham and MPs 
(Link to the Open Letter to Prime Minister Andy Burnham)

We are writing to call for a halt to the legislative process around assisted dying until disabled and terminally ill people have as much support to live as this bill would provide for us to die.

We are a group of disabled and terminally ill people who agree that the status quo cannot continue. But we believe that the only safe way to reduce suffering at the end of life is to reform the social and palliative care systems before any move is made towards a programme of assisted suicide.

Throughout history, disabled people’s lives have been consistently devalued, and we still experience this in the present on a daily basis. We are constantly fed the narrative that we are burdens, benefit scroungers and that it’s better to be dead than disabled. Not only do some of us internalise these messages, so do many of the people we encounter or rely on for support. Many disabled people have been made to consider suicide — not by the impact of our conditions, but the social context we live in.

Before we can talk about choosing to die, we need real autonomy over how we live our lives. At the moment, sick and disabled people, including terminally ill people, are denied choice over the most basic of things: our ability to get out of bed, wash, eat, leave our houses or manage our pain. This creates a coercive environment where people will choose an earlier death simply because they are being failed by society. Put simply, introducing assisted dying in these circumstances will put sick and disabled people’s lives at risk.

The prime minister is right: we must reform the care system before this bill can be considered and disabled people must be included in the conversation.

We are calling for you to vote No on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill and then work with disabled people and our organisations to: Fully fund palliative care to ensure comprehensive and compassionate care is available to everyone who needs it, ensuring no one feels pressured to end their lives simply because they are not receiving the medical help they deserve;

Abolish the social care savings threshold for working-age social care users, so we can save for essentials and major life milestones such as a vehicle or home downpayment without risking our support, and are at less risk of financial coercion. End financial penalties and benefit reductions for disabled people who live with a partner, protecting financial independence and making it easier for those in coercive or abusive relationships to leave safely.

Equalise pay between social care and the NHS, thereby reducing staffing shortages and ensuring sick and disabled people receive professional care from well-trained care workers, vastly reducing suffering during and at the end of life; and
⁠Form a taskforce on independent and supported living, led by disabled people, and set out a time scale for implementing its recommendations within six months of its first report, so that we can move towards a society where terminally ill and disabled people have choices in all areas and stages of life, as well as at the end of it.

We understand the flaws in the current system. No one wants any terminally ill person to suffer unnecessarily at death. But we must protect the lives and rights of disabled and terminally ill people in life. We urge you to hear our voices, understand our fears and work with us to create a system that is safe for all: one that assists us to live.

Sincerely

Lucy Webster, Anna Landre, Jamie Hale, Kyla Harris, and Rensa Gaunt on behalf of The Assist Us To Live campaign 

Lucy Webster, Journalist and Advocate / Assist Us To Live

Anna Landre, Marshall Scholar, University College London / Assist Us To Live

Jamie Hale, Artistic and Executive Director, CRIPtic Arts / Assist Us To Live

Kyla Harris, Filmmaker / Assist Us To Live

Rensa Gaunt, Campaigner / Assist Us To Live

Liz Carr, Actor and Member, Not Dead Yet

Ruth Madeley, Actor

Baroness Jane Campbell of Surbiton, Member, House of Lords and Convenor, Not Dead Yet UK

Rosie Jones, Comedian

Samantha Baines, Actress and Broadcaster

Mat Fraser, Actor and Writer

Sophie Morgan, TV Presenter

Andrew Miller MBE, Cultural consultant & Broadcaster

Samantha Renke, Broadcaster

Mik Scarlet Wallace, Broadcaster and Co-CEO, Phab

Kamran Mallick, CEO, Disability Rights UK

Tracey Lazard, CEO, Inclusion London

Adam Gabsi, Chair, Inclusion London

Ellen Jones, Author

Cherylee Houston, Actor

Victoria Jenkins, Designer

Dr. Nora Groce, Professor, University College London

Dr. Eben Kirksey, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oxford

Catherine Holloway, Professor, University College London and Director, Global Disability Innovation Hub

Dr. Victoria Austin, Professor, University College London

Dr. Maria Kett, Professor, University College London

Natalie Kane, Curator, V&A and Deputy Leader of Lambeth Council, Green Party

Arthur Hughes, Actor

Rick Burgess, Care in Crisis Coalition and DPO Forum Co-Chair

Sarabajaya Kumar, Associate Professor, University College London and Director, Impatience Ltd.

Tracey Jannaway, Director, Independent Living Alternatives

Colin Brummage, CEO, Camden Disability Action

Rachel Charlton-Dailey, Journalist and Author

Cathy Reay, Writer and Journalist

Damian Joseph Bridgeman, Disability Task Force, Welsh Government and Chief Executive, Bridgeman Community Foundation

Selina Mills, Writer and Broadcaster

Shani Dhanda, Accessibility Specialist

Hannah Barham-Brown, NHS GP

Dr. Gordon Macdonald, Care Not Killing

Rachel Gadsden, Artist and Director

Tamm Reynolds, Artist

Dr. David Turner, Professor, Swansea University

Dermot Devlin, DPAC Northern Ireland

David Jones, Professor of Bioethics, St Mary’s University, Twickenham

Peter Gay, Director, Disability Advice Service Lambeth (dasl)

Dr. Kevin Yuill, Professor Emeritus, University of Sunderland

Doug Paulley, Reasonable Access

Natalya Dell, Trustee, Reasonable Access

Tanya Motie, Former TV Executive

Aisling O’Connor, Co-founder and CEO, The Rosie Jones Foundation

Sue Groves MBE, Disability Campaigner

Dr. Amy Kavanagh, Activist

Dr. Louise Hickman, University of Cambridge

Jess Thom, Artistic Director, Touretteshero

Iyiola Olafimihan, Non-Executive Director, Global Disability Innovation Hub and Justice and Campaigns Lead, Alliance for Inclusive Education

Dan Edge, Actor and Access Coordinator

James Moore, Journalist

Natalie Amber, Actor

Elle McNicoll, Writer

Dr. Rob George, Professor, King’s College London

Eleanor Lisney, Director, Sisters of Frida

Jillian Nystedt

Ella Glendining, Filmmaker

Andrew Clark, Chair of Trustees, BuDS Disability Service

Wednesday Holmes, Illustrator and Author

CJ DeBarra, Author and Journalist

Simon Ford, Trustee, Independent Living Alternatives

Penny Pepper, Writer and Trustee, Independent Living Alternatives

Carrie-Ann Lightley, Writer

Lou Chandler, Content creator

Isaac Harvey, Disability Advocate

Dr. Calum Miller

Angie Airlie, CEO, Stay Safe East

Clare-Louise English, Director

Dr. Ros Jones, Paediatrician

Assisted Suicide for people with eating disorders.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On July 30, 2026 we published an article about the Colorado 2025 assisted suicide data. There were three key take-aways from the Colorado data.

1. Colorado does not know how many people died by assisted suicide. 
2. Colorado has missing data concerning how many lethal poison prescriptions were filled.
3. 
   The number of people who were approved for assisted suicide for eating disorders in Colorado has grown substantially. In 2024, 19 people with eating disorders were approved for assisted suicide and in 2025, 17 people with eating disorders were approved for assisted suicide.

During the assisted suicide bill debate in the UK, Eat, Breathe, Thrive, an organization that specializes in the treatment of eating disorders produced a video about the threat of legalizing assisted suicide for people with eating disorders. 

The video features Ailidh, who lives with an eating disorder and says:

I'm worried. My concerns lie with people like myself who are still in the throws of anorexia right now and what the assisted dying bill could mean for them and the families.

The film shows an anthropologist speaking to the UK assisted dying bill committee claiming that only one or two people have died by assisted suicide for eating disorders in America.

Considering the fact that Colorado alone approved 19 people in 2024 and 17 people in 2025 for assisted suicide based on an eating disorder, clearly the comments to the committee were wrong.

Chelsea Roff

Chelsea Roff, the founder of Eat, Breathe, Thrive, explains the study that they did on assisted death for eating disorders and found that at least 60 people died by an assisted death based on having an eating disorder.

People with eating disorders are living with a serious but treatable condition. 

They are not terminally ill.

The British assisted suicide bill is back - And so is Not Dead Yet.

The following message was sent out by Not Dead Yet UK on July 23, 2026.

By now you'll know that the assisted dying bill is back.

On 17 June, Labour MP Lauren Edwards introduced a new version of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. MPs will vote on whether it should proceed at its second reading on 11 September 2026. That's less than two months away.

So what's new?

Honestly? Not much.

This is the same bill Kim Leadbeater brought forward in 2024 — the one that spent months being picked apart in the House of Lords, generating more than 1,300 amendments before running out of time in April. The bill fell not because it was defeated, but because Parliament was prorogued. Now it's back, with two minor Lords amendments incorporated.

The first is a technical Wales amendment. Because delivering health services is devolved to the Welsh Government, the bill now requires the Senedd to give its approval before Welsh Ministers can set up the regulations for assisted dying in Wales. It's a constitutional housekeeping change. It doesn't alter what the bill actually does.

The second concerns people with eating disorders. This one is more serious. During the Lords debates earlier this year, peers raised concerns that someone with anorexia could potentially stop eating — deliberately — in order to reach the six-month terminal threshold and qualify for an assisted death. A minor amendment was added in the Lords to address this. But experts who work with people with eating disorders say it doesn't go far enough. The loophole, they argue, remains. We agree.

Everything else about the bill — its safeguards, its eligibility criteria, its scope — is unchanged. The concerns we have always raised remain. Disabled people face cuts to their independence, support, and care. Palliative care is under-resourced. In that environment, telling people they have the option to end their lives early is not compassion. It is a profound risk to people who already feel like a burden.

Even the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has acknowledged this. He has said he supports the principle of assisted dying — but only if hospices are "properly funded and sorted out" first. "You can't have this law change with an underfunded hospice movement," he said. We agree. And that underfunding hasn't been fixed.

What we're doing about it.

We are meeting very shortly to put the final touches to our campaign strategy for September. Our main goals are:

• Persuading MPs to vote against the bill at second reading on 11 September.
• Organising a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on the same day.

We will be in touch with full details as soon as they're confirmed — including how you can write to your MP, join us in person, or support the campaign in other ways.

We know many of you have been with us since the beginning of this fight. Your support matters enormously. We are not done yet.

Jersey assisted suicide bill receives Royal Assent

The following is a media release from the Care Not Killing Alliance on July 9, 2026.

Care Not Killing deeply disappointed as Jersey’s assisted dying law receives Royal Assent despite ECHR breaches

Campaign group Care Not Killing has expressed deep disappointment following the decision to grant Royal Assent to Jersey’s Assisted Dying (Jersey) Law 2026, making Jersey the first part of the British Isles to legalise assisted dying.

The group believes the legislation breaches the UK’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights — including Article 2 (right to life), Article 9 (freedom of conscience), Article 10 (freedom of expression), Article 11 (freedom of association), and Article 14 (freedom from discrimination) — and that this is precisely why Royal Assent had been held up for so long.

In a legal letter sent to the Attorney General of Jersey and the Ministry of Justice on 21 May 2026, Care Not Killing’s solicitors, Conrathe Gardner LLP, set out a series of concerns about the Law’s compliance with the ECHR. The letter warned that the legislation places vulnerable individuals at “severe risk of loss of life in a way that is discriminatory and impermissible under the ECHR.”

It highlighted that the law fails to adequately test for coercion, duress or undue influence — particularly in the case of disabled people — by relying on “an assessing doctor simply asking the individual if anyone has coerced them.”

The letter also noted that individuals with conditions such as bipolar disorder, depression, and autism face significantly higher rates of suicidal ideation, and that the Law makes no provision to protect them.

Care Not Killing pointed to the well-documented expansion of euthanasia regimes in other jurisdictions — noting that in Canada, one in twenty deaths is now by assisted suicide, and in the Netherlands, 5.4 per cent of all registered deaths are by assisted suicide with uptake increasing by 8 per cent every year.

The group also highlighted that even before the Law was passed, a proposition was tabled to extend it to incurable (non-terminal) conditions, and that Health Minister Tom Binet has stated this amendment will be proposed again in future. The Law also introduces so-called “safe access” zones that could criminalise prayer and sermons in places of worship near where assisted dying takes place, interfering with rights under Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the ECHR.

Dr Gordon Macdonald

Dr Gordon Macdonald commented: 

“This legislation will fundamentally alter health and palliative care on Jersey and put the lives of vulnerable people at risk, exactly as we have seen in those places that have introduced assisted suicide or euthanasia. It fails on a number of fronts, including: lack of legal protections for doctors and nurses who do not want to be involved, protections for the elderly and disabled people at risk of being coerced, will see money taken out of palliative care and has been sold to the public as a way to end suffering when we know from places like Oregon, those who take the death row drugs may suffer long and agonising death from a pulmonary oedema - where their lungs slowly fill up with bodily fluid and the drown in their own secretions.

“Importantly, as our lawyers have pointed out, this law does not comply with the European Convention on Human Rights and is not compatible with the UK’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We will be consulting our lawyers to determine our next steps and how and when this dangerous law can be challenged.”

For media inquiries, please call Alistair Thompson or Team Britannia PR on 07970 162225.

Editors Notes

Care Not Killing was founded as a UK-based alliance of human rights and disability rights organisations, health care and palliative care groups, faith-based organisations groups, and is supported by thousands of concerned individuals.

We have three key aims:

• to promote more and better palliative care;
• to ensure that existing laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are not weakened or repealed;
• to inform public opinion further against any weakening of the law. 

*As this story is dealing with suicide, please could we ask that you include details about organisations that offer help and support to vulnerable people who might be feeling suicidal such as the Samaritans, CALM or similar - Thank you.*

UK assisted suicide bill will likely die in the House of Lords.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Harry Farley, a political correspondent for BBC news wrote a commentary on the likely death of the Leadbeater UK assisted suicide bill. Farley's article provides significant information about what is happening within the British Labour party concerning the assisted suicide bill.

The article states that 100 Labour MP's warned Keir Starmer, Britain's Labour Prime Minister, that:

failing to pass assisted dying legislation would undermine trust in politics

Starmer has put significant political capital into the passing of the Leadbeater assisted suicide bill. Even though it is a private members bill, Starmer provided Kim Leadbeater with extra parliamentary staff to enable her to carry and pass the bill. It must be noted that Starmer is a long-time supporter of assisted suicide.

Now that Scotland's assisted suicide bill has been defeated with members who oppose assisted suicide and members who support assisted suicide but didn't support the McArthur assisted suicide bill.

Similar to the defeat of the Scottish assisted suicide bill, the UK assisted suicide bill has stalled in the House of Lords, based on opposition to assisted suicide but also based on the language of the bill. Farley explains:

The current bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales was passed by the Commons in June last year but has been stalled in the House of Lords for months and is now unlikely to pass.

Opponents warn the bill is flawed and any attempt to push it through would be unsafe and would harm vulnerable people. Downing Street (the Prime Minister) has previously said it was a matter for parliament.

Members of the House of Lords are trying to amend the bill. Farley writes:

Supporters now believe it is "effectively impossible" for the bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales to pass before the end of this session, expected in May.

This is largely because more than 1,200 amendments have been tabled in the House of Lords, principally from opponents to the legislation.

With only three of 14 days of debate in the Lords remaining, around half of the amendments are yet to be discussed.

Farley spoke to Jess Asato, a Labour MP who opposes the assisted suicide bill who stated:

"The sponsor of the bill has rejected 99% of suggested improvements and amendments in the House of Lords and so it still contains all the same faults and issues."

"Any MP that voted to push this bill through would do so knowing that it is unsafe and would harm vulnerable people."

Farley interviewed a source working with Labour opponents to the assisted suicide bill who said:

"For Labour MPs to continue to agitate for this unsafe, badly written and divisive bill rather than focus on the reasons people voted for us at the election is madness.

"Labour needs to work on delivering on our manifesto and running the country well, not rerunning contentious arguments about assisted dying."

With the defeat of Scotland's assisted suicide bill, it is more likely that the Leadbeater UK assisted suicide bill, that would legalize assisted suicide in England and Wales, will also die a natural death.

But as Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing stated concerning Scotland's assisted suicide bill:

We will need your help again in the future (“this is coming back”).

We hope that the Leadbeater assisted suicide bill will soon be declared dead, but the battle will continue as we await the next attempt in the UK, and other places, to legalize the killing of people at a vulnerable time of their life.