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Deeply Flawed Suicide Bill Reintroduced

The Labour party is making another ill-concealed effort to bring back euthanasia. Lauren Edwards MP has published her assisted suicide Bill in near-identical form to the much criticised Leadbeater Bill from the previous parliamentary session, retaining dozens of serious flaws identified by Royal Colleges, professional bodies, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and disability, mental health and domestic abuse charities. 

By publishing a near-identical Bill to the much-criticised version that failed in the previous parliamentary session, the Bill’s supporters have made clear their intention to use the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords to force the Bill into law should the Lords fail to pass the Bill again. 

The ability to use the Parliament Acts not only requires the Bill to be brought back in a near-identical form, but also means that it could not be amended in the House of Commons, making it impossible for MPs to amend the Bill in the House of Commons to fix the dozens of widely-publicised flaws in the Bill.

The Second Reading vote on the revived Bill on 11 September will now be a referendum on the use of the Parliament Acts for a controversial Private Members’ Bill, as well as on the assisted suicide Bill to which MPs will not be able to make amendments. This means September’s vote will be a very different proposition to the previous Second Reading vote on Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill.

As only 12 MPs need to change their minds for the new assisted suicide Bill to fall, and since seven MPs from Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats who had backed the previous Bill at Third Reading have already said they do not support plans to force it into law via the Parliament Acts / bringing back the Bill in this new Parliamentary session, Lauren Edwards now faces an uphill battle to pass the Second Reading vote on 11 September.  

Death By Organ Donation Plan Revealed

Patients approved for euthanasia should be allowed to ask doctors to kill them by removing their organs, a group of North American academics have argued.

In an article published by The New England Journal of Medicine, bioethicists Dr Robert D Truog and Dr Carter Winberg of Harvard Medical School, and Dr Ian Ball of Western University of Canada, said organs would be in a better condition if removed while a patient was still alive.

The authors called for jurisdictions where organ donation after euthanasia is legal — Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Canada — to consider allowing euthanasia by organ donation.

Truog, Winberg and Ball expressed frustration that current safeguards prevented “‘heart-beating’ euthanasia”, where death is “caused directly by removal of vital organs before cardiorespiratory function ceases”.

Truog told US media outlet NPR: “Why would it not be OK for patients to say, ‘I’ve chosen to die by a lethal injection. Isn’t there some way I can help others?’ They should be able to donate organs”.

He added: “I would say a more appropriate framework is that for patients who are choosing to die from euthanasia they could also choose to have euthanasia linked with organ donation.”

Have you ever seen a more slippery slope?