Labour's new assisted suicide bill poses a deadly threat not just to very vulnerable people, but also to the entire hospice movement, according to a senior bioethicist.
An absence of the right to “institutional conscientious objection” in Lauren Edwards MP’s assisted suicide Bill could see a “significant number” of hospices and care homes close, a bioethicist has warned.
Professor David Albert Jones stated that, in its current form, the Terminally Adults (End of Life) Bill poses “an existential threat to any institutions whose foundation documents are incompatible with participation in the act of intentionally ending human life”.
He dismissed claims by activists that such protections were ‘unworkable in practice’, noting that some US states with euthanasia or assisted suicide laws “concede the principle that the law can and should provide protection for the ethos of institutions”.
In his report Safe Spaces for the Dying, Prof Jones explained: “Conscience clauses are explicit provisions in law that create exemptions from legal or contractual obligations that would otherwise be imposed upon citizens or bodies.
He observed: “The paradigm of a right to ‘conscientious objection’ is protection of an individual from an obligation to act against his or her deeply held beliefs. It concerns the rights of an individual over and against an institution”.
However, he argued there are good reasons for including “overt protections for institutions” in assisted suicide legislation. He commented: “The provision of end-of-life care and of social care in England and Wales has benefited greatly from the contribution of hospices and care homes of religious foundation.
“In many cases participation in assisting suicide or euthanasia would be incompatible with the ethos of these institutions as reflected in their foundational documents. It is all but inevitable that a significant number of institutions might have to close if not provided with institutional protection.”
The bioethicist concluded: “The Bill threatens not only the right to life of vulnerable patients but also harms all who would want to be cared for in safe spaces where assisted suicide would neither be offered nor be performed. It would leave them with nowhere to turn.”
