On October 22nd Lady Meacher’s Assisted Dying Bill will receive its second reading in the House of Lords. It aims to legalise physician assisted suicide for patients with a terminal illness and who can be ‘reasonably’ expected to die in less than six months.
As is the case with a sizeable chunk of modern predilections—atheism, adultery, abortion—nothing much is new about euthanasia. Even the word itself derives from the ancient Greek term εὐθανασία meaning ‘good death’. However, in jurisdictions where the procedure has recently been legalised, it has hardly resulted in the ‘good’ ends implied by its etymological roots.
