Assisted Suicide Set to Be Legalised as MPs Back Bill
MPs have voted in favour of legalising assisted suicide as Labour’s massive majority allowed the legislation to clear its first hurdle in the House of Commons by 330 votes to 275. The Telegraph has more.
The Commons voted by 330 to 275, a majority of 55, in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, was among the 330 MPs who voted in favour of the Bill.
The decision to give the Bill a second reading means it will now face further scrutiny and votes in the weeks and months ahead on what will be a long road to potentially becoming law.
A five hour debate on the subject showed the Commons was split down the middle on the issue and numerous MPs said they would support the Bill but would want to see it improved down the line.
Kim Leadbeater said MPs had “done what needed to be done” as she welcomed the fact that her assisted dying Bill cleared its first major Parliamentary hurdle.
She told Sky News: “I am nearly in floods of tears because it has been a really emotional process. But I am incredibly proud that I think today we have seen Parliament at its best.”
She added: “I think we have done what needed to be done which is to take this really important piece of legislation to the next level.”
Rishi Sunak was one of 23 Tory MPs who voted in favour of the legislation. The former Prime Minister had been silent on how he would vote in the run up to today.
Other senior Tories who backed the Bill included Shadow Environment Secretary Victoria Atkins, Shadow Defence Secretary James Cartlidge and Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp.
Jeremy Hunt, the former Chancellor, also voted in favour.
Danny Kruger, who spoke against the Bill, said he hoped MPs would still reject the legislation at a later date.
Mr. Kruger told Sky News: “I’m very disappointed that we lost a second reading. It was actually Parliament doing its job, we didn’t know how it was going to go today, I think the debate was influential. I’m very sorry that I and others didn’t manage to persuade enough colleagues to win.
“But what really did come across is that everyone agrees we need to improve palliative care, which is my main concern, and a lot of people expressed real concern about this Bill. And what they said was it’s only the second reading, so it’s only headline support in principle to the Bill that they’ve given.”
He added: “It goes into committee now, it comes back to the House, so there will be a third opportunity to improve it if we can, and if we can’t then I hope we’ll be able to reject it.”
Andrea Williams, the Chief Executive of Christian Concern, which opposed the Bill, said: “Today is indeed a very black Friday for the vulnerable in this country, but this is not over.
“The proposals in this dangerous Bill have been completely exposed. The proposed safeguards are completely meaningless, and more and more MPs are waking up to that reality.
“This Bill will create more suffering and chaos in the NHS, not less, and if it goes through, the vulnerable will become more vulnerable.
“MPs are voting for the Bill at this stage in the hope that it will be fixed, however, the legislation is framed in a way that means it can’t be changed.
“It must be stopped at third reading, and we will not give up working to protect life and the most vulnerable in this country from these reckless and rushed proposals.”
Worth reading in full.
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Ierusalem, Ierusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum
Look at all those happy faces…
Pater, dimitte illis, quia nesciunt quid faciunt.
Although some of them may well know what they are doing.
Now you can kill people before they are born and before they would die.
Yes, what a creepy photo— when I first saw it, I thought they were celebrating getting rid of their husbands.
Maybe the pink bunch in photo could be the first to test it ! No surprise though , get rid of argumentative old cumudgens 😵💫
It perplexes me that opponents of the bill do not trust people to make this decision safely about themselves with the help of the NHS professionals, yet lobby for better palliative care trusting the same health service to provide these services when they have plainly failed to do so in a reliable, even-handed manner.
I’m not against assisted suicide but I believe this Bill has 2 flaws:
1. Equality legislation will mean that protections won’t survive legal challenge, either in terms of duration, how long prior to death can someone be given the poison.
2. It fails the Tony Bland case. Tony Bland, the Hillsborough survivor left in a persistent vegetative state, would still be starved or die of thirst. Likewise, someone without motor skills or suffering from dementia, incapable of self administering the poison would too be denied this option.
Murdering people is not okay.
Abortion – murder.
Euthanasia – murder.
Assisted murder – murder.
Soon they will be killing 2 year olds, and healthy 40 year olds who are ‘depressed’.
MAID in Canada is proof of what is going to happen.
Lying there with a brain tumour, now so large that you can no longer see nor speak, in agony, stressed breathing while the family question what would the sentence be for putting a pillow over his head and suffocating him to death…..
Never been there have you…… Quite obviously….
Don’t conflate ones right to assisted dying with your lack of trust in the State…. Two separate issues, that require separate debates..
Ps, we don’t have to like Canada…
You don’t have to artificially keep people alive; you don’t have to wire them up to machines with tubes sticking out of them just so that you keep them in a vegetative state.
But you can’t murder them.
Says you….. Is going to the vet to have your dog put down, when it’s clearly the time to, “murdering” it?
Or is it (some nuance for you to try to digest) a loving owner doing the right thing.
You’re gonna, struggle with that, North or South is all you know…
No, I’m not struggling with that.
A dog is a dog. Whilst a lovely creature and as such should be looked after properly, it is not a human being.
You’ve have struggled with it….
May I say that I agree with you there. I think it’s horrible that people pay the vet to murder their pets whenever it suits them. What a terrible life pets lead, especially dogs.
Do dog owners ever ask themselves what the dog is supposed to do while they are watching tv, or on the computer, or reading, or doing anything except play with the dog they are supposed to love so much?
The dog can lie down, chew a toy, eat something, drink from its water bowl, walk around inside the house, bark, and wish it was with other dogs, as in the wild.
Then when the owners and their kids are bored with the dog, they have it put down. What kind of life did the dog have? Pet owners are unconsciously cruel, like those who keep huge parrots in a cage, or chained to a perch.
“whenever it suits them”… Oh honestly thats just ridiculous.
Where on earth are you at to post such a diatribe… Have you ever seen dog owners after having their dog put down at the vets???… I have and I can tell you they are broken, immensely, deeply upset, it wasn’t something they ever wished to do, it was something that was necessary and carried out under extremely difficult circumstances..
But then there is the case of the old lady who agreed to be “put down” so as not to be a burden, and her family arranged a Hippocratic Oath Violator Doctor to give her a lethal injection, while they all stood around pulling solemn sad faces.
She changed her mind at the last minute and cried out that she desperately wanted to live, fighting and struggling, so the Hippocratic Oath Violator told her relatives to grab her and hold her down by main force so that he could inject her. They did, she screamed, he injected, she died, they got her money, job done.
Yes there is… So what’s your point…
I agree with MajorMajor— nothing artificial to keep people alive, tubes or ventilation machines, but plenty of painkillers like morphine to ease their pain.
Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do with my life
I was speaking in general, not in your particular case. If you want to throw away God’s Precious Gift of Life and Free Will on Earth, you have the Free Will to do so.
I just wonder where you think you will be going in the afterlife.
Arh… Herwith lies the problem…. You just used the God word 🤭
So where do you think you are going after your life on earth is done, and your immortal soul leaves your paltry physical form behind?
No where mate…. No where at all… Worm food.
I’m not delusional…
There’s no afterlife. Dead is dead. ‘God’ doesn’t seem to care or worry about pain and suffering: the definition of a sadist.
I strongly support that view, but what bothers me about assisted dying is that it’s also about what other people can do with your life.
And what some Grim Reaper Judge can do with your life.
And what some doctor is likely to be pressured into doing with your life as “best practice.”
What a stupid what if…
No— it’s from a news report last year.
I can’t see your point, yes these things happen but some anecdotal event does not mean and should not mean the rest of us are refused the right to determine how our life should end.
Well, as someone pointed out, most people can choose to end their lives whenever they want, and some fools do, often for the silliest of reasons.
Back again with your usual gobshite? You never give up do you.
“Don’t conflate ones right to assisted dying with your lack of trust in the State” – only if the State, such as the NHS, has no role in assisting people to kill themselves.
Indeed.
It is really as simple as that: murdering people is not OK.
It doesn’t matter if they are old.
It doesn’t matter if they are depressed.
It doesn’t matter if they haven’t been born yet.
It doesn’t matter if they are Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or atheist or communist or Russian or Ukrainian or they have money and we don’t.
It’s still wrong.
What’s with this “murdering people” rhetoric……
It’s frankly quite silly
Typical polarised mentally that is abundant on these boards..
Zero nuanced veiw point..
One day it might be you.
Think about how close we got to the Covid vaccines being mandatory.
Would you have believed just a few years earlier that there would be a day when here in the democratic west a government would seriously consider forcing you to accept a needle in your arm, whether you like it or not?
Having seen that, do you really think our government won’t be tempted to bump you off when you become a burden?
Haha… You’re speaking to the wrong person, with this.. “one day it might be you”…
I’m not at all like you with your ultra pro life stance…i think that’s a contruct, life isn’t “precious” at all, on the contrary, it’s utterly inconsequential and absolutely nihilistic.
So get a grip…. You’re not as important as you think you are mate…
So where do you think you are going when you shuffle off this mortal coil?
No where, where are you going?? To the Pearly Gates 🙄
No, I don’t believe that.
There is nothing you can say that will convince me that my life is purposeless, inconsequential and meaningless.
You can take everything away from me, but not that.
Yes, I’m pro-life. Because the alternative, being pro-death is abhorrent.
Except it’s not murder if somebody wishes and instructs it. Somebody who is of sound mind and has made this decision without any coercion. If this legislation goes through proper then people who are suffering will be able to make advanced directives and instruct their next of kin of their wishes and get it all down in the presence of a lawyer. Everything above board, everything within their control. It is for nobody else to stick their oar in as how somebody wishes to die based on their own personal circumstances is nobody’s business but their’s, frankly. Nobody is sanctioning ”murder” of anybody.
Well said
Let ’em suffer, even as they beg for help to end it. Stiff upper lip, eh, Major ?
Your living in a very black and white world. As a nurse for 40 years, I have witnessed endless pain,suffering and gross indignity, that could potentially have been prevented,if those affected could have had a the ability, legally, to cessate their terminal illness.
Yes I’m sure that the specifics of this piece of legislation are probably far from perfect, but the the current status quo is also far from perfect, though you are probably blissfully unaware of that.
People with an ideological viewpoint like yours are as unhelpful and misguided as any Leftist.
Black and White, polarised worlds are ubiquitous on these boards, it’s obvious that they speak out of naivety.
Well I know many won’t agree but I’m relieved. Agency over one’s own existence is certainly a path where I diverge from many if not all who read this organ.
I’m pro choice on abortion, pro assisted dying and pro choice on vaccines.
I’m still fit and walk a good 10 miles a day but I will welcome the option, if needed of a restful end on my terms rather than find myself unmanned and bereft of wit. Too few remember the lessons of Tithonus when grimly trying to hold on to a suffering loved one.
The problem is: the day will come when it will not be your choice.
Just like the vaccines. Or heating your house. Or the food you eat.
Precisely.
The way this has gone in Canada does raise serious questions as to whether, once the genie is out of the bottle, it can ever be controlled?
I think most people here are “pro choice” on “vaccines” provided that
1) Taxpayers money does not pay for them
2) The regulator either regulates properly or is disbanded
The point about “assisted dying” and “abortion” is that at the point of termination the living creature being killed is not or may not be capable of choosing. I am very pro choice when it comes to how other people live their lives, but when there’s termination of life involved to be done by others I think it’s more complicated.
Living ‘creature’?
The pregnant woman makes the choice. The ‘creature’ is incapable of making a choice.
Well, some people think life begins at conception. I think abortion is a complex topic where competing concerns apply and cannot be simplified as being “pro” or “anti” choice.
The issue for many is who will make the choice?
I agree. But I do have mixed emotions about this. It’s great if people who are genuinely suffering can end their own lives if this is what they truly wish, and if a loved one aids them they won’t be prosecuted for manslaughter, but I’m not naive and I know for a fact this is open to abuse and it undeniably will be. They’re going to have to make criteria extremely strict to minimize this inevitability. We’ve also seen just how much the government respects citizens’ lives and human rights so it is obviously open to abuse from that angle too.
My other concern which I’d want clarified is what meds they’re going to use. Barbiturates seem to be what’s generally used but then there’s quite a bit of variation, with some countries also using muscle relaxants ( paralytics ), and I have heard horror stories of people being paralyzed but still able to feel everything and they may seem peaceful outwardly but are actually still fully aware as they slowly suffocate to death with nobody knowing. So not a peaceful and merciful death at all in some instances, which is very concerning.
May God bless Andrea Williams of Christian Concern, and Danny Kruger, for opposing this. Some comments from the public: — “If MP’s put as much effort into controlling our borders as helping people to top themselves, we would be better off.” — “I had to watch my parents suffer, blah blah blah! So we will all suffer under a state that wants a Use-By-Date on us.” — “The greedy family members will be loving this. Quick end for early payday. Shocking” — “Realistically all safeguards can be bypassed with the right loophole, I can see a future where people will be written off in their last months.” — “Once government, enemy of the people, gets its foot in the door, expect the door to be opened wide and then the whole house demolished. Not in the least surprised that Starmer voted for it. This is all part of the new Logan’s Run World Order.” — “The problem is that how long will it be before these safeguards are watered down… Look at the safeguards of the 1967 Abortion Act, those safeguards no longer exist.” — “Greed will prevail. The benchmark will move, 10 years later move again, until they tell us whether… Read more »
Re the second comment from a member of the public above it’s more like a “Discard- by-date” and the concern is who will determine it
Absolutely. One other member of the public said it was like a
“Best-Before-Date”.
Wasn’t it Bill Gates who approvingly predicted “Death Panels” in the future that would decide such things? Creepy!
Great post thank you.
Life is sacred. Protect it. Bless it. Love it.
Remember how abortion was for rape, then how it became ‘contraception’ by killing infants?
Sooner than you think, they’ll be putting grandad down like an old dog.
Infants?
Some States in US you can terminate a pregnancy up to birth ie 9 months.
You can in this country if the foetus has a disability as mild as a cleft lip.
100% spot on.
Slippery slopes indeed. Look at MAID in Trudeaustan. It is now the 3rd leading category of death.
Oh yes. It was going to be only ever used in exceptional cases, very rarely, for grave reasons.
Now it’s considered nothing.
I remember reading an article some years ago in the French left wing “Le Monde” that argued that terminating a pregnancy should be viewed nothing more serious than going to the dentist to remove a tooth.
Thats’s when it really hit me how deep we have fallen.
Like the Organ Donor list where you opted in. Now you have to opt out.
And yet again, no one will notice that it is mostly Ethnic Europeans being euthanized.
Canadian coroner records 428 cases of doctors breaching assisted dying guidelines
Well, it is certainly the ethnic European culture that seems to have a death wish.
I have a feeling it won’t be the Muslims who will bump their grannies off.
Traditional cultures – even the ones that we don’t like – with large families will try to protect their elders, by and large.
No, as many a carer will tell you, the Third World Ethnics love to dump their grannies off at a care home and disappear. But they don’t bump themselves off. Their children are not the ones being “diagnosed”, often by Third World “doctors”, with incurable, strange childhood cancers and diseases with fancy names. It’s almost always the white kids who are the victims, but nobody notices that. Like the little white boy who loved football and was a star player on his local kids team, until he was badly tackled by a Third World Ethnic, injuring his foot, then a “doctor” informed his mum that they would have to actually cut off his foot, to make sure he never played footie again, and the poor foolish woman let them do it, and everyone said what a brave boy he was. He was replaced on the team by a Third World Ethnic, surprise, surprise. And Third World Ethnics don’t often commit suicide, or go off to the Swiss clinics, but are happy to encourage white people to do so. Traditional cultures like Hinduism do NOT protect their elders, but encourage their mothers to throw themselves on the funeral pyres of their… Read more »
Ever since early in my medical career from 1980, I was contributing to parliamentary consultations on exactly this issue every few years. Each time the vote was solidly against it, and each time (a bit like EU treaties) it came back like a bad penny as if somehow the issues had changed.
This time, after I forget how many attempts, it’s been passed. So what has changed, if not the issues? Clearly the only explanation can be that British politicians have become suddenly more morally competent. Indeed the whole of our news for the last few years demonstrates that we are in a golden age of ethics, especially in the political sphere. </irony>
Indeed, well said john. It must be their supreme ethical intellect which has changed. Nothing to do with a coordinated global action on individual rights.
Sir Keir Starmer voted in favour of the Bill
Rishi Sunak voted in favour
Jeremy Hunt voted in favour
That says it all
Unfortunately, it appears that Reform Party’s Richard Tice, Rupert Lowe and Lee Anderson also voted in favour.
Only Nigel Farage and James McMurdock voted against.
Tice is an odd one isn’t he. He was full on Rona fascist as well. I simply don’t trust him. God Bless Farage and McMurdock.
Amen, brother!
Apologies, I have posted much the same before reading the comments.
Parliament’s nadir. This will be forever remembered as the blackest day in our nation’s history.
A parliament of nothing more than a coven of heathens.
Rot you bastards.
Who are those horrific haridans in the pic? Angels of death celebrating their imminent licence to kill?
NHS heroes….
One could say right on cue given that the cancer deaths are really kicking in now. I have seen so many in every age range in the last few months and these are fast cancers. Not that this makes them merciful because the last few months tend to be rather unpleasant. I mean you wouldn’t keep a dog alive in that state. That is what they want. I will always be opposed to assisted suicide but I can see how it fits perfectly into our time. You aren’t too fussed about the sacred when you are in agonising undeserved meaningless pain.
But isn’t that what all those pain-killing drugs are for, to alleviate pain? And old-fashioned morphine?
You’d think that developing marvellous pain-killers would be a top priority for Big Pharma, wouldn’t you, but instead they focus on “vaccines”.
Even the very best painkillers do not work on all pain, and some have a fatal dose for one person that is less than the minimum effective dose for another.
I know a number of people who have told me how useless pain relief was in palliative care of their family members.
I think the problem is that the pain pathways in the body are so very closely associated with respiration, so these “marvellous” painkillers are not simple to develop.
That is very interesting about the pain pathways. I still think Big Pharma could have done better after all these years of massive profits and developing all sorts of other types of drug and “vaccine”, leaving people to turn to old-fashioned, God-given morphine to ease their pain at the end of their lives.
Kneel voted in favour of this legislation. Kneel works for the Davos Deviants. That is ALL we need to know.
If this does ever become law then understand what it means. Not so much a degradation but a marker. Yes there is a fundamental injustice in the idea of a person being prohibited from killing themself by the very condition that makes them want to kill themself. This decision has nothing to do with long hard ponderings about medical ethics it is far nastier. Maybe they were pushing at an open door but it is still necessary to try and keep the door shut despite apparent overwhelming force. You will lose the last of the energy that sustains you if you don’t.
Is this the first step on a dangerously slippery slope?
What a sad, sad day for the UK. Parliament has decided it’s ok to murder people both at the start and now at the end of life.
Ooh a lady on the same page as me. Farage wants to lower the abortion limit, which I’m all for;
”I agree with Farage’s view on this issue. Personally, I believe that abortions should not be permitted beyond the 12-week mark, except under extraordinary circumstances.”
https://x.com/TheNorfolkLion/status/1862561492484206857
Everybody is terminally ill from the moment they are conceived.
‘Assisted dying’, or state-sanctioned murder, is a complete inversion of the basic spiritual-moral code of causing no deliberate harm to another living being. The arguments put forward about reducing suffering are completely covered by correct palliative care which of course can include large doses of pain killers which might hasten death, without that being the objective.
This obscene and shamefully hastened through bill also throws this clause of the Hippocratic Oath (and its general intention) that all doctors sign up to into the dustbin:
“I shall never intentionally cause harm to my patients, and will have the utmost respect for human life.”
Though this is a very, very sad day for Britain (one that Charles Darwin made near inevitable with his widely endorsed ‘Struggle for the Survival of the Fittest’ pseudo-scientific / atheistic / anti-morality thesis one hundred and fifty years ago) I am not going to feel down but rather determined:
This Shall Not Stand.
You and the Telegraph are talking as though this Bill is now law. There is a long road yet, and those of us who passionately opposed this Bill are not done.
The Bill will be fought over line by line at the Committee Stage. Then there will be a Third Reading debate and vote – no doubt just as fiercely fought as the Second Reading was.
And then the Bill goes to the Lords, where opposition will be even stronger than in the Commons. After all, many of the Lords are politicians from a previous generation, who always voted against such Bills in the past. There is every chance the Bill will be defeated there.
If it is, then it will come back to the Commons. The government is extremely unlikely to push the Bill through against Lords defeats, and if the parliamentary session ends before the Bill is passed, the Bill will fall.
The odds are still surely that this Bill will fail.
What has been missing is any information on how these deaths are going to be achieved and are they going to be different from the current end of life morphine syringe driver protocol and if so, how?
A tragic result. What an increasingly dark world we are living in. However, it doesn’t change the fact that in God alone I trust: his kingdom come, his will be done.
There are many, many low points marking this country’s descent into our next dark age. Yesterday has got to be one of the worst.
Well that’s one way of thinning out the upper house!