Last day to respond to Margo Macdonald's flawed proposals on assisted suicide

Today is the last day to respond to Margo Macdonald's consultation on assisted suicide. The MSP is planning to bring another bill to the Scottish Parliament in an attempt to legalise assisted suicide just over a year after her last similar bill was overwhelmingly defeated by 85 votes to 16. Essentially this is a rerun of the same flawed and tired arguments.

Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has published a good overview of her latest proposal's many failings but I suspect most will just be objecting to the bill in principle.

I have reproduced below the submission of the Care Not Killing Alliance, representing over 40 professional groups, faith groups and human rights groups. It says it all. Brief and to the point.

This bill like her last should be given short shrift by Scottish parliamentarians.

Care Not Killing Submission

We are opposed to the general aim of this proposed bill for the following reasons:

1. Just over a year ago, a very similar bill, the End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill, was comprehensively defeated in a free vote at the Scottish Parliament in December 2010, by a margin of 85 votes to 16. This should have settled the debate in Scotland for a generation.

2. The previous bill was heavily criticised by MSPs, medical practitioners, palliative care charities, religious groups and legal experts for being both unclear and unethical. Furthermore, 87% of all who made written submissions to the scrutinising committee were opposed to it. The committee also overwhelmingly recommended that it be rejected.

3. The new Bill is to be modelled on a system currently in place in the US state of Oregon where the annual number of assisted suicides has increased dramatically by over 450% since being legalised in 1997, where one in six of those dying are depressed, less than one in 20 receive psychiatric assessments and some patients have actually been denied medical care and offered assisted suicide as a cheaper alternative.

4. The terms in the proposal, especially with regard to those ‘terminal conditions’ to be included in its remit are vague, imprecise and ambiguous.

5. Any change in the law to allow assisted suicide would place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives for fear of being a financial, emotional or care burden upon others. This would especially affect people who are disabled, elderly, sick or depressed.

6. Persistent requests for euthanasia are extremely rare if people are properly cared for so our key priority must be to ensure that good care addressing people's physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs is accessible to all.

7. The present law making assisted suicide and euthanasia illegal is clear and right and does not need changing. The penalties it holds in reserve act as a strong deterrent to exploitation and abuse whilst giving discretion to prosecutors and judges in hard cases.

8. Hard cases make bad law. Even in a free democratic society there are limits to human freedom and the law must not be changed to accommodate the wishes of a small number of desperate and determined people.

9. The pressure people will feel to end their lives if assisted suicide or euthanasia is legalised will be greatly accentuated at this time of economic recession with families and health budgets under pressure. Elder abuse and neglect by families, carers and institutions is real and dangerous and this is why strong laws are necessary.

10. The number of British people travelling abroad to commit assisted suicide is very small (150 in ten years) compared to numbers in countries and US states that have legalised assisted suicide or euthanasia.

11. If assisted suicide or euthanasia is legalised any ‘safeguards’ against abuse, such as limiting it to certain categories of people, are unlikely to work. Instead, once any so-called ‘right-to-die’ is established we will see incremental extension with pressure being applied to expand the categories of people who qualify for it.

12. The vast majority of UK doctors are opposed to legalising euthanasia along with the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Association for Palliative Medicine and the British Geriatric Society.

13. All major disability rights groups in Britain (including RADAR, SCOPE, UKDPC, NCIL and Not Dead Yet UK) oppose any change in the law believing it will lead to increased prejudice towards them and increased pressure on them to end their lives.

14. Changes to the law of this kind should not be driven by public opinion but by serious informed debate. Public opinion polls can be easily manipulated when high media profile (and often celebrity-driven) ‘hard cases’ are used to elicit emotional reflex responses without consideration of the strong arguments against legalisation.

Conclusion

This proposal is flawed in principle and Care Not Killing calls upon the Scottish Parliament to reject it at the earliest opportunity.

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Margo Macdonald dishes up the same confused euthanasia proposals again

Margo Macdonald today announced that she is going to try again to legalise assisted suicide and/or euthanasia (it’s not clear which) in Scotland, just over a year after her last spectacular failure.

Ms MacDonald, Scotland’s only independent MSP, said in unveiling a new consultation on the issue, that she has ‘learned lessons’ from her previous attempt and is proposing a ‘clearer, more straightforward process’.

Among her new proposals is a suggestion that trained ‘licensed facilitators’ would need to be present when someone is at the point of ending their own life to ensure that lethal drugs are ‘taken correctly’.

But on who will actually qualify for assisted suicide under her bill she is less clear.

She told the BBC that it would be for those who are ‘suffering a terminal illness or condition, for whom life becomes intolerable’.

But then she told the Daily Record that it was for anyone who’s ‘life has been made intolerable by an irrecoverable illness’.

And the Scotsman quotes her as supporting assisted suicide when a patient’s life has ‘become intolerable to him or her as a result of their irreversible condition’.

So what is it Margo – ‘terminal illness’, ‘terminal condition’, ‘irrecoverable illness’ or ‘irreversible condition’?

And how are you defining ‘terminal’, ‘irrecoverable’ and ‘irreversible’?

Tetraplegia is usually irreversible but not terminal. Diabetes is ‘irrecoverable’ without treatment but not ‘irreversible’ with it. Leukemia is ‘terminal’ but not irrecoverable if managed properly. And literally hundreds of thousands of British people suffer from conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and chronic bronchitis which are ‘irrecoverable’ but partly reversible and not terminal.

We will have to wait and see Ms Macdonald’s specific proposals but thus far they are rather confused and do not sound much different from those in her last ‘End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill’ which the Scottish Parliament rejected overwhelmingly by 85 to 16 at its first stage debate in November 2010.

On that occasion 87% of all who made written submissions to the scrutinising committee were opposed to it and the committee overwhelmingly recommended that it be rejected. Scottish GPs later added their voices to those calling for it to be dumped.

MSPs rejected Ms Macdonald's last attempt to legalise physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in Scotland recognizing that such a move would seriously endanger public safety. Instead they sent a ringing endorsement to making the very best palliative care widely available and accessible.

The key argument that decided the last vote and the similar votes in the House of Lords in 2006 and 2009 is a simple one: 'The right to die can so easily become the duty to die.'

Vulnerable people who are sick, elderly or disabled can so easily feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to end their lives so as not to be a burden on others.

Ms Macdonald’s new proposals sound very much like the old ones dished up again. I expect the Scottish parliament to give them short shrift.

Past blogs on Margo Macdonald’s last bill

The Committee scrutinizing Margo Macdonald's Bill have rejected it – now it is time for MSPs finally to bury it

Margo Macdonald MSP is seriously misleading the Scottish Parliament over the number of deaths her bill would allow

Overwhelming defeat for Margo Macdonald's End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill

You have read this article Assisted Suicide / Euthanasia / Margo MacDonald with the title Margo MacDonald. You can bookmark this page URL http://celebrityunitedking.blogspot.com/2012/01/margo-macdonald-dishes-up-same-confused.html. Thanks!