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Another MP Moves Against Assisted Suicide

Another Labour Party MP has said that Andy Burnham is right that the care sector needs to be fixed before any debate around legalising assisted suicide should take place.

Just weeks before Second Reading of the new assisted suicide Bill on 11 September, Douglas McAllister, the Member of Parliament for West Dunbartonshire, has argued in support of the Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s latest statement on assisted suicide, in which he expresses serious reservations about making assisted suicide legal when end of life care is in such a poor state.

McAllister, who voted against the last, almost identical, assisted suicide Bill, said his “concerns have not gone away”.

McAllister’s article came after the Prime Minister said that the debate around introducing assisted suicide should not take place in a context where palliative and social care remains poorly funded, confirming “that’s the position I will stick to”. 

“I take the view that that debate – and I don’t say that there shouldn’t be a debate at some point about those issues – personally, I think there’s something that needs to happen first. That is the fixing of the funding of palliative care and social care”, Burnham said.

McAllister argued that it is correct that Parliament should “first aim to provide the care that [terminally ill people] need to live out their last days well” before any possible legalisation of assisted suicide were to take place. 

The MP explained that the assisted suicide Bill brought forward in the last session of Parliament by Kim Leadbeater underwent many months of scrutiny in the House of Lords. The recent Bill brought forward by Lauren Edwards is an almost identical copy of the Leadbeater Bill, meaning that, if MPs vote it through at Second Reading on 11 September, “we once again face months debating the same issue that dominated headlines and divided colleagues and communities last year”, McAllister observed. 

Democrats Cheer Abortion til Birth

America's Democrats seem to be gripped by the cult of death. Massachusetts Democrat Gov. Maura Healey signed a new law Monday eliminating the need for specific medical justifications for abortion past 24 weeks, establishing effectively unlimited abortion up to birth in the state.

Under previous state law, an abortion may only be performed past 24 weeks if a physician deems it “necessary to preserve the life of the patient”; “necessary to preserve the patient’s physical or mental health”; “warranted because of a lethal fetal anomaly or diagnosis”; or “warranted because of a grave fetal diagnosis that indicates that the fetus is incompatible with sustained life outside of the uterus without extraordinary medical interventions.”

Such exceptions, pro-lifers have long warned, give abortionists ample wiggle room to authorize late-term abortions under false pretenses. But H. 5595 would do away with even those conditions, replacing the language with “an abortion may be performed by a physician based upon the professional judgment of the physician.” It would also add language that “no medical review process shall override the professional judgment of a treating physician and a patient or the patient’s health care proxy to provide an abortion consistent with the new section.”

The state’s radically pro-abortion governor signed the law in a ceremony Monday surrounded by women (some wearing white doctors’ coats) who clapped their hands in celebration.