I wanted to quickly share some brilliant news with you.
The Second Reading debate of Baroness Meacher’s assisted suicide Bill has just ended. Following mass opposition from over 60 Peers who spoke against the Bill in the debate, Baroness Meacher has not taken her assisted suicide Bill to a vote!
This is an excellent outcome.
The assisted suicide lobby would likely have pushed for a vote at Second Reading if they felt they had the numbers to win a division. However, it looks like they realised that they would be unlikely to have sufficient support to win a vote today.
In the House of Lords, at Second Reading, a Bill does not need to win a vote for it to progress to the next stage in the Lords, but Baroness Meacher could have divided the House in the hope of winning the vote to demonstrate support for introducing assisted suicide from the House of Lords. If she had won this division, it would have helped give additional momentum to the assisted suicide lobby’s campaign to introduce assisted suicide.
The Bill will now proceed to Committee Stage, but is unlikely to be given time in Parliament to be debated in the House of Commons and become law, given that it is not supported by the Government.
We have just published a piece on our Right To Life News platform which goes into more detail and includes videos of some of the best speeches from the debate.
THANK YOU
This could not have happened without the amazing work of thousands of Right To Life UK supporters, like you, who have written to Peers ahead of the debate today.
A number of Peers quoted letters from supporters in the debate and Baroness Stroud said that she has received more correspondence on this issue than any other in her time in the House of Lords.
Earlier this week Lord (Charles) Moore wrote in his column in The Telegraph about the high quality of the correspondence he has received ahead of the debate, quoting from personal stories that had been sent by Right To Life UK supporters to Peers.
I also wanted to thank the many medical professionals from among our supporters who signed an open letter opposing the introduction of assisted suicide and mobilising their colleagues to sign that letter. The letter was signed by nearly 1,700 medical professionals and was featured in an article on the front page of The Telegraph earlier this week, clearly showing opposition from the medical profession to these proposals.
The debate, which went for over seven hours, followed the publishing of a very large number of opinion pieces in mainstream media outlets from MPs, Peers, doctors, and other experts highlighting major issues with introducing assisted suicide.
Thank you to our supporters who have given so generously to enable us to have the resources in place to work closely with MPs, Peers and like-minded organisations to run a very large campaign against this Bill.
None of this would have been in place in order to help achieve this great outcome without your generous financial support. Thank you.
SADLY, THIS IS NOT THE END
Unfortunately, this is not the end. Like the abortion lobby, the assisted suicide lobby headed by ‘Dignity in Dying’ never sleeps. We know they will be back soon with their next attempt to introduce assisted suicide, so you will need to be ready to ensure there is a strong response from the public against their next attempt.
In the meantime, thank you again for all your help on achieving this great outcome – and make sure you celebrate tonight!
P.S. If you are discussing the issue over the weekend with friends and family who may not necessarily agree with you on this issue, I would recommend sharing this article from the Mail, which was published this morning.
It details an investigation into the assisted suicide process overseas revealing that the use of fatal drugs to end a life can be a harrowing experience involving the overdose of common drugs that can last hours or days for the person involved.
While this may make for confronting reading, I think it’s very helpful for people to know that it’s not an instant peaceful death as implied by campaigners for assisted suicide.