An eating disorders researcher has warned that bringing back the assisted suicide Bill using the Parliament Acts would also bring back a loophole that would put the lives of people with eating disorders at risk.
Chelsea Roff, the founder of leading eating disorder charity Eat Breathe Thrive, said that Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill, which fell in the last session of Parliament, had a loophole that meant people with severe anorexia could have qualified for assisted suicide if they became physically compromised through self-starvation.
Assisted suicide campaigners have made it clear that they are going to attempt to resurrect Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill in the new parliamentary session, and then use the Parliament Acts to force assisted suicide into law without needing the consent of the House of Lords.
To do this, an MP would be required to bring forward an identical version of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill.
Roff warned that MPs, by bringing back an identical version of the Bill, would “also be reviving the same dangerous loophole” that existed in the original Bill.
Key supporters of assisted suicide Bill agreed that it posed risks to people with anorexia
During the progress of the assisted suicide Bill through Parliament, Roff said she felt “compelled to make Parliament aware” of cases of women with anorexia who had been deemed eligible for assisted suicide elsewhere. Roff gave evidence before the Commons Public Bill Committee concerning this issue.
Roff explained that the dangers of people with anorexia being put at risk by the assisted suicide Bill were so serious that even some of its leading supporters had eventually agreed that changes had to be made.
“By the time the Bill reached the upper chamber”, she said, “even Lord Falconer, the Bill’s sponsor and one of assisted dying’s staunchest advocates, had tabled amendments to stop people with eating disorders qualifying for assisted death”.
Roff said that even Kim Leadbeater, the MP who had brought the assisted suicide Bill forward in the first place, had acknowledged, in Roff’s words, “that further drafting work would likely be needed to protect people with eating disorders”.
However, if the Parliament Acts were to be used to force a revived Bill into law, it would not be possible for the kinds of changes Falconer and Leadbeater proposed to be adopted.
In regions where assisted suicide is already legal, people with anorexia are ending their lives
Roff revealed that, in places where assisted suicide is legal, there have been cases of people who have anorexia intentionally stopping eating and drinking to make themselves eligible for state assistance in ending their lives.
Roff conducted a study in 2024, which identified more than sixty women with eating disorders as their principal illness who had ended their lives through assisted suicide or euthanasia abroad.
One such individual was a woman from California named Alyssa, who had anorexia, OCD, and depression, Roff explained.
“Her doctors concluded she would ‘clearly have a less-than-six-month prognosis’ if she stopped attempting to follow a higher meal plan, and suggested to Alyssa she would be eligible for assisted death under California law”, Roff said.
Alyssa refused the usual treatments that have been proven to help people with anorexia, like a residential eating disorder program or a feeding tube.
Subsequently, Roff said, “Alyssa was approved for assisted death and prescribed lethal medications under a law that, like the one which failed to pass in the previous parliamentary session, was supposed to apply only to the terminally ill”.
Despite her clinicians knowing that she was suicidal, Alyssa was still provided with help to end her own life. “[O]nce doctors concluded she qualified for assisted death, the focus of care shifted from suicide prevention to facilitating her death”, Roff explained.
If the assisted suicide Bill were to be brought back in Westminster and forced into law, similar situations could arise here, too.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “It is a tragedy that preventable deaths of people with anorexia have been allowed to happen because of the legality of assisted suicide in some jurisdictions. We express our gratitude to Chelsea Roff for highlighting this important issue”.
“Supporters and opponents of the assisted suicide Bill eventually agreed that protections for people with eating disorders were not adequate in the Bill as drafted. MPs who might be considering bringing back this piece of legislation must heed Roff’s warnings that they will be bringing back the loophole that would allow people with anorexia to end their lives”.
