The Welsh Health Secretary, Jeremy Miles, has said that the assisted suicide Bill does not “provide sufficient safeguards for patients” after voting against a motion in the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) to consent to the Bill.

Speaking to the BBC the day after the vote, Miles said that he was “clear in my own mind that the fundamentals of the bill, as it’s going through Westminster, don’t provide sufficient safeguards for patients”. 

“Although the vote yesterday was on the devolved areas… the net effect is to give powers in Wales to deliver a service that I don’t think I would support if I was operating over the border”, he added.

Speaking during the debate, Miles expressed concern about giving consent to what would be an unfinished version of the assisted suicide Bill, stating that they have found themselves in an “unusual position”. 

The debate centred on a Legislative Consent Motion (LCM) pertaining to the assisted suicide Bill. An LCM is required under the devolution settlement where UK legislation would extend into devolved areas in Wales, since health services are a devolved matter.

While the Senedd decisively voted against legalising assisted suicide in principle in October 2024, only weeks before the Second Reading of the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill in Westminster, it narrowly voted in favour of the LCM on Tuesday. 

As supporters of the motion made clear, the vote was not on whether assisted suicide should be made legal in Wales. Rather, it was a vote on a narrowly worded motion regarding the implementation of assisted suicide in Wales, should it become law.

Tactics employed on Tuesday by the Bill sponsors, Kim Leadbeater and Lord Falconer, seemingly “blackmailing” Labour Senedd Members to support the motion with threats about forcing a private assisted suicide service on Wales, have been heavily criticised online.

While England and Wales look set to be saved from state-sanctioned murder of the old and sick by the House of Lords, things have taken a turn for the worse in the Channel Islands. Jersey’s politicians have voted through an assisted suicide Bill.

The Bill was passed by 32 votes to 16. It will allow terminally ill adults to receive help to kill themselves if they are expected to die within six months, or 12 months if they have a neurodegenerative condition. It also makes provisions for euthanasia, where a doctor or nurse may directly administer the lethal drugs to end the life of their patient.

It will be sent for Royal Assent, with the first assisted suicides expected to happen as soon as next year.

Jersey State Member Louise Doublet, who voted for the legislation, called assisted suicide “one of the most meaningful things we can do for our island.”

The self-described humanist claimed she is “guided by principles of compassion”, and said: “It is a compassionate gift we are giving our island.”

Jersey politician Sir Philip Bailhache, who voted against it, commented: “I’m all in favour of compassion, I’m in favour of people having deaths which are good deaths, but I’m not in favour of the law which has just been passed.

“Life is a precious thing and I don’t think really that it’s for people to remove life in the way in which the assisted dying law is now going to authorise.”

Pro-Life arguments CAN win - and this has just been proven in Great Britain. The assisted suicide Bill has been widely pronounced as dead by commentators after it was revealed that it will “almost certainly” run out of time in the House of Lords and will not become law. This conclusion comes after the Government Chief Whip in the Lords confirmed that the Government will not be committing any further time to the Bill.

Private Members’ Bills, like the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, are only debated on Fridays, and despite seven additional sitting Fridays being granted for the Bill before Christmas on top of the seven which had already been scheduled, even the team behind the Bill now expect it to fail.

Assisted suicide campaigners have repeatedly claimed that just seven Peers have been blocking the Bill by tabling lots of amendments, but this spin from assisted suicide campaigners paints a deeply misleading picture of the actual situation in the House of Lords. 

Nearly 80 Peers have so far tabled or signed amendments highlighting concerns with the Bill and 131 Peers have either spoken against the Bill or signed amendments raising such concerns during its passage through the Lords.

This is significant because Bill supporters are seemingly attempting to persuade MPs to revive the Bill in the next parliamentary session and force it through using the Parliament Acts, on the basis that a small number of Peers have inappropriately blocked its passage. Our analysis shows this claim to be wholly untrue.

131 is an exceptionally high number of Peers opposing a Bill, particularly one where debates are reserved for Fridays when Peers are often not expected to be in Parliament. It is even more remarkable given that the Bill has not yet completed Committee Stage or reached its Report Stage or Third Reading. In addition to these 131 Peers, it is likely that more Peers will speak out during future sittings and it is known that many more Peers are opposed to the Bill. Others have already spoken out in the media or expressed concerns via written parliamentary questions.

Contrary to the misleading claims of Bill supporters, the number of Peers opposing the Bill by speaking against it or signing amendments raising concerns is therefore among the highest number ever recorded for a Bill in the House of Lords, even before the Bill has completed its Committee Stage.

Those Peers who have spoken against the Bill or signed amendments include Peers appointed to the House of Lords because of their expertise in relevant areas, including a former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and President of the British Medical Association, the former Chief Executive of NHS England, a leading Professor of palliative medicine, Peers living with disabilities, and legal experts, including a former Attorney General and the former President of the Family Division of the High Court.

This large number of Peers have been subjecting the assisted suicide Bill to extensive scrutiny due to what opponents of the Bill have said are dangerous flaws and a lack of adequate safeguards within the Bill.

Seventies rock chick Suzi Quatro has spoken movingly about an abortion she had at the age of 18, describing it as “my life’s greatest regret”.

The singer and actress, who has sold over 55 million records, said in retrospect she would have kept the baby – who would now be 46 years old.

Quatro said she is delighted that her daughter, who also became pregnant at 18, kept her child.

The American performer, who moved to England in the 1970s, told the Daily Mail about her experience of abortion.

“When my two kids were born, I couldn’t get out of my mind who that first baby would have become. He or she would be 46 now.

“Any woman who’s been through an abortion and tells you it was nothing is lying.

“Of course I might well not have gone on to achieve what I did in my career if I’d become a young single mum.”

“But that doesn’t stop it being my life’s greatest regret.

“If I could turn the clock back, even allowing for everything that’s happened to me since, I’d have kept that baby.”

She also explained that when her daughter, Laura, told her she was pregnant at 18, Suzi spoke to her about own experience for the first time.

The singer said that she would have stood by her daughter whatever decision she made, but is delighted that she did not have an abortion.

The danger from abortion pills has been brought home by a new and shocking legal case. An Irish man has pleaded guilty to forcing a woman to take abortion pill. 

The man forced the woman to take abortion pills, which he obtained from a pharmacy in Dublin, on Valentine’s Day 2020, ending the life of her nine-week-old unborn child.  

It took the police in Ireland four years to access the accused’s phone because of a programme he had installed on it. Once accessed, it showed that the man had searched online for how to conduct an abortion at home using abortion pills. 

The phone also contained an audio recording of the man forcing the woman to take the abortion pills, in which he can be heard saying, “I’m showing you what to do… take this… I’m dead serious… I’m forcing you. I don’t care, take it”.

Following the consumption of the abortion pills, the woman was in a large amount of pain and suffering from cramps. The man had locked her in a room during this time and told her not to eat anything. 

The man is also charged with assaulting the woman and causing her harm, which he has also pleaded guilty to.

During her victim impact statement, the woman made it clear that she has suffered a long-term impact following this forced abortion. 

“When he wrongfully imprisoned me and caused the termination of my nine-week pregnancy, he took far more than my freedom”, she said. “He took my child. He took my sense of safety. He took a future that I had already begun to plan and love”.

“My baby was real to me. I had hopes, dreams, and a bond with the life that was growing inside me, and all of it was violently stolen from me in a moment of cruelty that I will never forget”, she added.

“I will always grieve my child. I will always remember what was taken from me”, the woman said, adding, “What happened mattered. My child mattered. And justice matters”. 

If you want to see the slippery slope of euthanasia in all its increasing horror, look at Canada.

A 26-year-old Canadian man who had seasonal depression has been euthanised by a notorious doctor who is personally responsible for ending the lives of over 400 of her patients. 

Kiano Vafaeian, who had partial vision loss and lived with Type 1 diabetes, faced mental health struggles, which often became worse in the winter, as a result of a car accident when he was 17. After losing vision in one of his eyes in 2022, Vafaeian became “obsessed” with ending his life by assisted dying, according to his mother, Margaret Marsilla. 

Vafaeian had attempted to end his life on Canada’s assisted suicide and euthanasia programme several times but had been rejected by several doctors, with one doctor saying, “This patient does not have terminal illness and/or reasonably foreseeable natural death”.

Despite this, Dr Ellen Wiebe, one of Canada’s most prolific providers of state euthanasia, approved Vafaeian’s request, and he had his life ended, which Vafaeian’s parents only learned about days after the fact.

Wiebe, who has described her role in administering euthanasia as “the most rewarding work [I’ve] ever done”, has made headlines with her zeal for euthanising her patients. Last year, she suggested that being motivated to end your life due to concerns about housing should be accepted as a legitimate reason for euthanasia in Canada. 

“Four years ago, here in Ontario, we were able to stop his euthanasia and get him some help”, Vafaeian’s mother said. “He was alive because people stepped in when he was vulnerable and not capable of making a final, irreversible decision”.

“This is not healthcare. This is a failure of ethics, accountability, and humanity. No parent should ever have to bury their child because a system – and a doctor – chose death over care, help or love”, she added.

The eligibility criteria for Canada’s assisted suicide and euthanasia programme have rapidly expanded since the original legislation was passed in 2016. In 2021, the Canadian Parliament repealed the requirement that the natural death of those applying for assisted suicide be “reasonably foreseeable”, known as Track 2. In 2024, legislation was introduced so that euthanasia and assisted suicide would be legal on the grounds of mental health alone in March 2027.

Abortio regret is a very real thing. By blighting the lives of so many women, it adds to the terrible tragedy of abortion. Now an American performer has spoken of her regret at aborting her baby to pursue her comedy career.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Emma Estrada confessed that although she once joked about the experience on stage, she now mourns the loss of the “potential kid, the aborted future”.

A strong factor in her change of heart was seeing how her then boyfriend Gabe — the child’s father — reacted to the loss.

When Gabe told her that his sister had just had a baby, she recalls seeing it “as the perfect segue”. She continued: “I told him I, too, was having a baby except I wasn’t keeping mine. He blinked at me.”

She observed how “Gabe became sick in the following days and didn’t talk much”. Nevertheless, she decided to go through with the abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic and ‘put her career first’. The baby was five weeks old.

A month later, at a comedy variety show on Sunset Boulevard, around the time Texas outlawed abortions, she joked about the experience.

“I’m really glad I got my abortion in California because if I were in Texas, I couldn’t drive out of state. I have a 1999 Toyota Camry — it just couldn’t handle it.”

The couple split up after Gabe heard about this, but a few months later they briefly got back together. She asked him: “Do you ever think about the fact that we almost had a kid?” He replied in an instant: “All the time.”

“‘All the time’ played like a mantra in my head for days”, Emma wrote. “It rang out to me in my sleep, in my waking life. I wanted to replay my 20s, to rewind, to fast-forward, to choose differently.”

She started to reimagine her life: “I would try to see myself with a child. They’d be 4 years old now. Gabe would be there. We’d be living together in North Carolina where he’s from. We’d be happy. I’d be writing. He’d be painting. We’d have big windows and a backyard.”

She explains: “I’ve stopped performing. When I think of forgoing a baby for a comedy career, I think: What career? I work as a copywriter. No awards to my name. Nobody recognizes me. I never made it to 100,000 followers.

“I think of Gabe and think of him thinking about it. The potential kid, the aborted future. I wonder if he mourns it too. He must.”

Our work for the unborn goes on every day of the year. But let us pause from our usual coverage of directly pro-life issues, and reflect for a moment today on the far bigger question - of Life eternal.

Let us acknowledge that we are not worthy to speak to God, and yet, let us have an unshaken confidence in the power and goodness of Him, who only commands us to pray that he may pour out his mercies upon us. The season we are now in is one of prayer; the Church redoubles her supplications; it is for us that she makes them; we must take our share in them.

Let us, during this season of grace, cast off that languor which fastens on the soul at other times; let us remember that it is prayer which repairs the faults we have already committed, and preserves us from sin for the future.

Bow down your heads to God.

Spare, o Lord, spare thy people: that having been justly chastised, they may find comfort in thy mercy. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The massive legal battle against state-sponsored killing rolls on. A remarkable 131 Peers have now either spoken against the assisted suicide Bill in the House of Lords or signed amendments because of concerns with the Bill, highlighting the extent to which legislation is flawed. 

This number includes Peers appointed to the House of Lords because of their expertise in relevant areas, including a former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and President of the British Medical Association, the former Chief Executive of NHS England, a leading Professor of palliative medicine, Peers living with disabilities, and legal experts, including a former Attorney General and the former President of the Family Division of the High Court.

This large number of Peers have been subjecting the assisted suicide Bill to extensive scrutiny due to what opponents of the Bill have said are dangerous flaws and a lack of adequate safeguards within the Bill. 

Despite it being clear that a large number of Peers have already shown opposition to the Bill through 131 Peers speaking against it or signing amendments because of concerns with the Bill, assisted suicide campaigners have attempted to present opposition as coming from a small group of seven “shameless” Peers who they claim are “blocking” the Bill. 

This appears to be campaigning spin from the assisted suicide lobby to attempt to build support for bypassing the House of Lords using the Parliament Acts, rather than it being the reality of the situation in the House of Lords.

Using the Parliament Acts to force the assisted suicide Bill into law in the next session would be profoundly irregular, and would also misrepresent the extensive scrutiny that has been given to the Bill by Peers. 

The Parliament Acts have never been used with regard to a Private Members’ Bill, and it would be unprecedented for them to be invoked for a Private Members’ Bill that passed the Commons by a narrow margin, with fewer than 50% of MPs voting for it at Third Reading, and which was not in the Government’s manifesto.