Ireland must be on its guard against renewed attempts to remove end-of-life protections for the vulnerable, a well-known Catholic newspaper columnist has said.

Writing in the Irish Times, Breda O’Brien warned that the progress of a Private Member’s Bill promoting euthanasia in Westminster could give “impetus” to the cause of activists seeking to introduce assisted suicide in Ireland.

She also said that the fall of Gino Kenny’s Private Member’s Bill at the Dáil’s dissolution prior to the election, as well as his failure to be re-elected, “does not mean the issue will not be revisited”.

O’Brien branded Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill in the UK “deeply flawed” and described its passing to Committee stage in the House of Commons as “rushed”.

She pointed out that the Bill’s compatibility with human rights legislation had been questioned, and that Leadbeater’s claims it had the support of the judiciary had been shown to be unsubstantiated.

Evidence from countries where assisted suicide or euthanasia is legal, she added, revealed how the ‘eligibility criteria’ are expanded over time and people ask for medical help to kill themselves for fear of being a burden to others.

She continued: “Families cannot object; doctors cannot truly opt out, as they must refer to another doctor; there is no obligation, as there is even for a tonsillectomy, to explain that the procedure has risks other than the obvious one of death, such as vomiting up the drugs or slipping into a coma.”

Turning her attention to the situation in Ireland, she noted: “disability groups are vehemently opposed to legalisation, as are the Irish Association of Palliative Care, the Irish Palliative Care Consultants’ Association, the Royal College of Physicians and the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland.

“The Irish College of General Practitioners is neutral but admits that even among those who favour it, the support is passive with little indication of any desire to be actively involved in taking lives.

“The last government recently published an important strategy on palliative care. Instead of foisting assisted suicide on healthcare professionals who don’t want it, and vulnerable people who deserve better, why don’t we do something really progressive by prioritising palliative care?”

If you went by all the puff-pieces for "assisted suicide" in the liberal media, you might think that everyone who might be involved supports the move to push euthanasia into law in Britain.

But the truth is very different. Activists with disabilities are speaking out against the legalisation of assisted suicide and are warning that vulnerable people risk “being devalued to death” as Labour MP Kim Leadbeater attempts to introduce assisted suicide.

Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill has led to an outcry among a number of major disability rights groups and activists who are continuing to express their fervent opposition to the move. 

Actress and activist Liz Carr, who described the prospect of legalising assisted suicide in the UK as “terrifying” in her BBC documentary Better Off Dead?, shared her fears about its effect on vulnerable people. 

She said “For many disabled people the assumption that we’d be ‘Better Off Dead’ is something that we get used to hearing. We do not believe that any safeguard can adequately protect us from coercion, abuse, mistake and discrimination. We believe that if assisted suicide is legalised, disabled, ill and older people risk being devalued to death”.

‘What’s to say I won’t be eligible for a death sentence, and pushed into it?’

Fears of coercion are very real for Dermot Devlin, founder of the disabled rights and disability blog My Way Access, who told Politics UK he is “scared” about being forced into an assisted suicide through the new Bill.

“With my increased chronic pain, respiratory failure and mobility issues, what’s to say I won’t be eligible for a death sentence, and pushed into it?”, he said.

Disability rights activist George Fielding echoed Devlin and Carr’s concerns, stating that legalising assisted suicide would “lead to coercion and pressure on disabled individuals to end their lives prematurely”. He said “In a society that often devalues and marginalises disabled people, it is not difficult to imagine scenarios where individuals feel like they are a burden to their families or caregivers. The mere existence of legally assisted suicide could send the message that ending one’s life is an acceptable solution to these feelings rather than addressing the underlying societal attitudes and lack of support”.

As for the medical experts, no doctors’ groups in the UK support changing the law to introduce assisted suicide or euthanasia. The British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Physicians, the British Geriatric Society, and the Association for Palliative Medicine have all rejected the proposals.

While Donald Trump has rejected any federal ban on abortion, America's industrial baby-killers are still dreading his presidency. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s appointees to head the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have already said they will defund Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider. 

J D Vance stated in October that a second Trump administration will defund Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood gets roughly $450 million in federal government funds; about 40 percent of their revenue comes from government reimbursements and grants. If the federal government were to completely cut ties with the abortion giant, the cuts could conceivably sink the organisation and lead to the closure of many brick-and-mortar abortion clinics. 

In many states, Planned Parenthood has pushed out smaller abortion providers and acquired a monopoly on abortion provision; if PP clinics were to close, many areas would have no abortion clinics in the area. 

Add to that the fact that, according to a new report, abortion clinics are closing right across the country. The Guardian noted this week that in total, “76 independent abortion clinics have closed since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 … But the closures aren’t limited to states with restrictive laws. Of the 11 clinics that shuttered in the last year, eight were located in states with strong abortion protections.” From the Guardian: 

Over the last year, 11 independent abortion clinics closed, bringing the nationwide total of brick-and-mortar indie clinics in the U.S. to 363, according to a report released on Tuesday morning by the Abortion Care Network (ACN), a network of independent providers. That’s down from more than 500 in 2012.

 

Committing suicide or leaving your family with a huge tax bill. That's the grim 'choice' facing many elderly people in Britain if the Assisted Suicide Bill becomes law.