Dear Editor

I WRITE with regards to the Bill, recently introduced in the House of Commons, by Kim Leadbeater MP. This Bill is intended to legalise “assisted dying” (a euphemism for assisted suicide) for those who are terminally ill.

There will be a range of views about the rights and wrongs of this held by your readership. Regardless of their stance, I must warn them that, if the Bill is passed, it will not take long for its scope to be widened to include other people, whatever may be said otherwise.

Already, no less than 38 of Ms Leadbeater’s fellow Labour MPs are campaigning to extend the scope of her bill from applying to the terminally ill to applying to those ‘incurably suffering’. [1]

In other countries where “assisted dying” has been introduced, it hasn’t taken long for the eligibility criteria to be extended. For example, Canada allows MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying). A 2021 press release from the Canadian Government “removes the requirement for a person’s natural death to be reasonably foreseeable”, i.e., MAID’s scope was widened (in response to a court case) to no longer solely be the terminally ill. [2]

In Holland, euthanasia has now been extended to children as young as 12. [3]

If “assisted dying” is introduced to the UK, elderly people may feel they should make use of it if they feel they are “in the way”. It’s easy to see how the elderly and other vulnerable people could be taken advantage of, and pressurised to “do the right thing” and “stop being a burden” to their families.

You can learn a lot about a society in the way it treats its elderly, disabled, and other vulnerable people. Please God, we won’t go the way of Canada and Holland.

Let’s tell our MPs that we don’t want the Leadbeater Bill to be passed.

Yours sincerely 

Matthew Gillman 

References

1. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13931063/mps-assisted-dying-law-labour-party-private-members-bill.html

2. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2021/03/new-medical-assistance-in-dying-legislation-becomes-law.html

3. https://www.government.nl/topics/euthanasia/euthanasia-assisted-suicide-and-non-resuscitation-on-request#:~:text=Euthanasia%20and%20minors,in%20the%20decision%2Dmaking%20process.