Assisted death

In the British Parliament:

MPs are due to vote next week on a private member’s bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales. MPs have been given a free vote, meaning individuals rather than parties will decide whether to back or reject the bill. (The Guardian)

Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown has expressed opposition to the bill:

‘Assisted suicide is an emotive issue where I personally disagree with what is now becoming a majority position…I worry about legislation that requires a doctor whose role has always been to preserve and extend life, to administer death as the final act of a bureaucratic procedure and I worry too about the pressures to agree such a process that in a fit of depression people may choose a course they might later regret and I worry too if older people feel they have become a burden on their relatives and put themselves under pressure to end their life.’

Brown’s decisive intervention this weekend, in his monthly comment piece for the Guardian which opened movingly with the tragic death of his and his wife Sarah’s baby daughter, was carefully thought through. ‘The experience of sitting with a fatally ill baby girl did not convince me of the case for assisted dying; it convinced me of the value and imperative of good end-of-life care,’ he wrote, before going on to call for a commission on improving palliative care instead of a law change. .... (more)

James Macintyre, "Gordon Brown’s assisted dying intervention could be decisive," The Spectator, Nov. 23, 2024.