An emotional, accelerating campaign to allow assisted dying for terminally ill adults in Britain has reached parliament, with activists hoping the country will become one of few to legalize the process. <\/p>\n
A Private Member\u2019s Bill is to be introduced in the House of Lords on Friday, putting the issue back on parliament\u2019s agenda \u2013 though it is uncertain whether it will reach the House of Commons for approval from lawmakers. <\/p>\n
Whatever its progress, it marks another development in a debate that has found its way onto Britain\u2019s airwaves and prompted impassioned appeals from some well-known faces. <\/p>\n
\u201cChange is definitely coming.\u201d <\/p>\n
Assisted dying generally refers to the process through which a person with a terminal illness can legally access drugs to end their lives. It is legal in few countries; Canada and 11 US states allow it, as does most of Australia, Switzerland and the Netherlands. It is partially available in Germany and Italy, while Spain and Portugal have legalized the process in recent years. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe conditions for change have never been better,\u201d said Ellie Ball of Dignity in Dying, a leading campaign group that has pushed for years for the United Kingdom to follow suit. \u201cThe trend around the world is towards giving people greater choice at the end of their lives.\u201d <\/p>\n
But it is a heated national conversation, and its path to legalization remains long \u2013 with vocal pockets of opposition from outside and inside parliament. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe state should not be complicit in encouraging people to end their lives,\u201d said Alistair Thompson, a spokesman for Care Not Killing, which opposes any change in the law on assisted dying or euthanasia and advocates for better palliative care. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople just need to look very coldly, clinically at the facts and the data, and not necessarily at clearly very emotional stories,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s bill is not the first to reach parliament; nine years ago MPs voted by a sizable margin not to legalize assisted dying in Britain, and Lords have occasionally tried to reintroduce the issue in the years since. <\/p>\n
For Falconer, the time is right to try again. \u201cThere has been over the last year or two a much greater urgency and interest in the issue,\u201d he said. His bill is similar to the law in Oregon, the first US state to allow assisted dying, where only terminally ill people \u2013 and not those in unbearable suffering \u2013 are permitted to seek medication that would end their lives. <\/p>\n
It does not go as far as Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada, which allow an assisted death in cases of suffering as well. Only a handful of countries allow euthanasia, in which another person deliberately ends someone\u2019s life to relieve suffering. <\/p>\n
It is currently a crime to help somebody die in England and Wales, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Performing euthanasia on a person, meanwhile, is considered murder or manslaughter. <\/p>\n
Polling indicates the public broadly supports ending those laws, and a campaign by celebrated journalist and broadcaster Esther Rantzen, who is terminally ill with lung cancer, has given the issue a prominent face. <\/p>\n
\u201cIsn\u2019t it typically British that we give the pets we love a pain-free, dignified, private death but we can\u2019t offer it to the people we love,\u201d she told the BBC in April. <\/p>\n
Rantzen told the broadcaster that allowing assisted dying would \u201cmean that I could look forward in confidence to a death which is pain-free surrounded by people I love.\u201d <\/p>\n
Currently, traveling alone to a clinic like Dignitas in Switzerland is about the only option for Brits in her situation, but it is one very few seek out; only 33 British citizens ended their lives at Dignitas in 2022, according to the clinic. <\/p>\n
Opponents of legalization have argued that those small figures represent a limited appetite for assisted dying in the UK, but there are other pressures at play too. \u201cIf my family go with me, they could be investigated by the police for killing me, or pressuring me to die,\u201d Rantzen told the BBC. <\/p>\n
One of the clinic\u2019s recent British patients was Paola Marra, who had terminal cancer and died at Dignitas earlier this year. In a video message filmed before her death, she said: \u201cThe pain and suffering can become unbearable. It\u2019s a slow erosion of dignity \u2013 the loss of independence, the stripping away of everything that makes life worth living. <\/p>\n
\u201cAssisted dying is not about giving up. In fact, it\u2019s about reclaiming control,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Britons are increasingly hearing stories like Rantzen\u2019s and Marra\u2019s. But some among the country\u2019s lawmakers, who will ultimately decide the fate of the assisted dying law, say there is more to consider. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in danger of it being a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre,\u201d said Rachael Maskell, a Labour lawmaker and clinician who has researched assisted dying on parliament\u2019s Health and Social Care Committee. <\/p>\n
But she listed a number of reservations that she and other members of the committee considered, including that legalization would encourage patients to seek an earlier death to avoid becoming a burden on their relatives. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had that conversation so many times with patients,\u201d she said. \u201cThat worries me, because that person has as much right to a fulfilled life.\u201d <\/p>\n
And she said a lack of monitoring in Oregon of how medication is assigned and taken by patients \u201chorrified\u201d her when she visited the US state to study its law. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t be a world leader, we would be a world follower,\u201d Maskell added. <\/p>\n
The arrival of an intensely delicate issue in Britain\u2019s parliament provides an early political test for Keir Starmer, Britain\u2019s new prime minister \u2013 and the decisions his government take on the bill will determine whether and how soon assisted dying becomes legal in the country. <\/p>\n
The first stages of a premiership are typically finely choreographed; a government\u2019s priorities are introduced to parliament, one by one, as the prime minister looks to craft the public\u2019s first impressions of their new government. <\/p>\n
For Starmer, the assisted dying bill has the potential to disrupt those intentions. He said before and after this month\u2019s general election \u2013 which his Labour Party won in a landslide \u2013 that he would allow time for a debate on the issue if it reaches the Commons, and he would allow a free vote on the issue, meaning his MPs wouldn\u2019t be asked to vote one way or the other. <\/p>\n
But legalizing assisted dying wasn\u2019t in Labour\u2019s manifesto or in its King\u2019s Speech, limiting the opportunities for it to ever reach MPs. Falconer\u2019s effort is a Private Member\u2019s Bill, allocated individually after a ballot determined which peers can introduce a bill. A similar ballot will take place in the Commons in September, which could see an elected lawmaker take on the mantle, and that is the way the government is believed to prefer the matter is introduced. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe key piece of the jigsaw that is currently missing is a vote in the Commons,\u201d Falconer said. \u201cI think (Starmer) is very keen for it to be done. (But) of course there are other priorities.\u201d <\/p>\n
Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, is likely to eventually face calls to allow a debate and a vote on the issue, whether those come as a result of Falconer\u2019s bill or another legislative push. <\/p>\n
But campaigners are urging lawmakers to turn to the matter faster. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe debate needs to start as soon as possible,\u201d she said. \u201cDying people don\u2019t have time to wait.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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