On Friday, from 08:30 several campaign groups will be gathering to rally outside parliament to demonstrate their opposition to Kim Leadbeater’s Bill to legalise assisted suicide.
Hundreds of people are expected to gather outside Parliament with a highly visual display illustrating the stark choice facing society with this Bill. Campaigners are gathering to ask MPs to vote against Kim Leadbeater’s Private Members’ Bill to legalise assisted suicide.
Christian Concern and Distant Voices are two of the many groups that are gathering to oppose the bill, including disability groups, medics, humanists and religious organisations.
As part of this widespread opposition to the bill, Christian Concern and Distant Voices will hold a highly visual display, warning of the dangers of the bill.
Tomorrow marks the first opportunity since the much-criticised committee stage for MPs to debate the Bill.
People with experience of disabilities, mental health issues, and eating disorders will be available for interview about the Bill.
Flawed Committee Stage and removal of High Court Judge
MPs have increasingly expressed concern about how the committee stage was run and with the biased makeup of the committee.
Many sensible amendments proposing safeguards to the bill were rejected by the committee.
The bill was also changed at committee to remove the safeguard of a High Court Judge being required to sign off on each request for assisted suicide. This safeguard has been replaced with what have been dubbed ‘death panels’ of volunteers who will not have the powers of a judge to summon witnesses.
Strong criticism from Royal College of Psychiatrists
Many MPs have been struck by the strong criticism of the bill from the Royal College of Psychiatrists this week.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists warned that assisted dying/suicide is not a treatment and that the Mental Capacity Act does not provide a framework for assessing decisions about ending one’s own life.
It further warned that there are not enough psychiatrists to do what the Bill requires.
Impact assessment fuels concern about workability of Bill
The government’s impact assessment of the Bill showed that there is increasing uncertainty around how the Bill will work in practice and raised questions about the workability of the Bill given high levels of expected opt outs from NHS professionals.
The government’s equality impact assessment explicitly stated that people with mental health conditions are not excluded from accessing assisted suicide services – contrary to what some have claimed about the safeguards in the bill.
The equality impact assessment also made clear that pregnant mothers and those with disabilities will not be excluded from accessing assistance to end their own life.
Those who voluntarily stop eating and drinking to worsen their condition are not excluded from accessing assisted suicide, neither are those suffering from depression or who feel they are a burden.
If this bill becomes law, all eligible patients will automatically be entitled to assistance to end their lives while not all of those patients will have access to good palliative care.
Doctors will be allowed to raise assisted suicide with a patient multiple times without any request from the patient. There are serious risks of pressure, coercion and abuse.
There are mounting concerns about this Bill in both parliament and across society. Disabled people in particular are very concerned about pressure to end their lives.
‘Suicide is not the answer’
Nikki and Merv Kenward, who are part of the campaign group, Distant Voices, will be available for interviews.
Nikki Kenward contracted the Guillain-Barré Syndrome virus shortly after she and her husband Merv married. It is a condition where the body’s immune system attacks part of the nervous system. The virus left her in a condition where she was only able to blink one eye.
She found herself locked into her own body and admits that at times her life seemed unbearable.
Her lengthy hospital stay, and her unlikely recovery, taught both Nikki and Merv a great deal about life, death and the questions surrounding end-of-life decisions. That journey made them realise how easy it would have been for a medical system that had been given permission or grieving family members to opt for euthanasia rather than life.
Nikki said: “If you’d asked me then, I would have said I’d rather not live. Just one of my eyes would open and I think if my family had been asked by the hospital they’d have opted to end my life. I hadn’t seen my son for months and the thought of him being without me broke my heart more than what was happening to me.”
Now, having seen her son grow up and married, she is grateful that there was not the choice for her or her family to make. She said she is living proof that people should carry on living.
“I believe that suicide is not the answer, the answer is to be cared for with absolutely brilliant, palliative care”, she says.
As a Christian I would oppose assisted dying because it is the slippery slope. It could easily be abused by bad people