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New assisted suicide Bill receives First Reading in House of Lords

A new assisted suicide Bill received its first reading in the House of Lords today only six years after a similarly worded assisted suicide Bill was defeated by an almost three to one majority.

Baroness Molly Meacher, Chair of the pro-assisted suicide group, ‘Dignity in Dying’, has put forward a private member’s bill on assisted suicide that received its First Reading in the House of Lords today. A Second Reading is expected in the autumn.

The Bill follows the Marris-Falconer Assisted Dying Bill (2015), which was defeated by a majority of 330 to 118 MPs.

According to supporters of the Bill, Dignity in Dying, “[t]he bill is modelled on legislation that has been in place in Oregon, USA for over 23 years […]”

Assisted suicide in Britain

Assisted suicide remains a criminal offence in the UK under the Suicide Act 1961. If a doctor assists in the suicide of a patient, they could spend up to 14 years in prison.

Since their Bill’s resounding defeat in 2015, assisted suicide supporters have since attempted to pass assisted suicide legislation through the courts. All such attempts have so far failed. In 2019, the high court said the courts were not the place to decide moral issues. In a ruling concerning a man with motor neurone disease who wanted to be assisted in suicide, the court said: “In our judgment the courts are not the venue for arguments that have failed to convince parliament”.

Fear of being a ‘burden’

Countries like Canada, where the practice has already been legalised, reveal that the motivations for assisted suicide are largely social and not related to physical suffering. In 2019 for example, Canada reported that more than a third (34%) of those who opted for “medical assistance in dying” cited concerns of being a burden to family or carers. A further 13.7% cited “isolation or loneliness” as their reason for procuring an assisted suicide.

This experience is corroborated by the Oregon Health Authority, which found a series of concerns not related to physical suffering for people who ended their lives by assisted suicide.

The report lists ‘End of Life Concerns’ of patients who underwent an assisted suicide in 2020. 53.1% of patients were concerned with being a “burden on family, friends/caregivers”. 94.3% of patients were concerned with being “Less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable”. 93.1% were concerned with “losing autonomy” and 71.8% were concerned with “loss of dignity”. Of the total who have died since 1997, 27.4% have listed “inadequate pain control, or concern about it” as one of their end-of-life concerns.

Calls for the legalisation of assisted suicide come at the same time as a global pandemic, which is having an adverse effect on many people’s mental health. In October 2020, a 90-year-old woman was euthanised in Canada because she said she couldn’t cope with another lockdown.

Pushing the boundaries

While proposed changes to assisted suicide legislation would likely not permit an assisted suicide under these circumstances, other countries that have introduced supposedly restricted assisted suicide and euthanasia legislation have seen an expansion of their laws as medical professionals and activists push the boundaries of acceptable practice.

Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 2002. The law permits voluntary euthanasia for anyone over the age of 16, and children aged 13-15 can be euthanised with their parents’ consent. Earlier this year, the Dutch government said it would be changing the regulations to allow doctors to end the lives of terminally ill children between the ages of one and twelve.

Right To Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson, said:
“Supporters of a change in the law on assisted suicide frame the debate in terms of unbearable suffering ‘beyond the reach of palliative care’, as Baroness Meacher put it. Yet the experience of other jurisdictions, particularly Canada and Oregon, which have legalised assisted suicide and/or euthanasia tell a very different story. The majority of people who choose to end their own lives with medical assistance say it is because they fear being a ‘burden’, or ‘loss of autonomy’ or ‘loss of dignity’. These reasons have nothing to do with physical suffering, and it should be a source of scandal that people who are struggling in this personal, psychological and social manner, are offered death as a solution”.

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Help stop three major anti-life threats.

Help fight the next phase of our battles against major assisted suicide and abortion up to birth threats.

Dear reader,

We are facing two major threats in the Lords - an extreme assisted suicide Bill and an abortion up to birth amendment.

THE GOOD NEWS - OUR STRATEGY IS WORKING

At Second Reading of the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill in the House of Lords, a record number of Peers spoke, and of those who took a position, around two-thirds opposed the assisted suicide Bill. That is more than double the number who supported it.

Our side also secured a significant win, with the establishment of a dedicated Lords Select Committee to further scrutinise the Bill’s proposals – and Committee Stage has been delayed until it reports.

This momentum has been built by tens of thousands of people like you. Thanks to your hard work, Peers are receiving a very large number of emails and letters by post, making the case against the Bill. 

Thanks to your support, we have been able to mount a major campaign in Parliament, in the media and online – alongside your own efforts – to keep us on course for our goal: that this dangerous Bill never becomes law.

BUT MORE CHALLENGES LIE AHEAD

We cannot become complacent. Well-funded groups - Dignity in Dying, My Death My Decision and Humanists UK - have poured millions into pushing assisted suicide. They can see support is slipping and will fight hard to reverse that.

This is not the only fight we are facing in the House of Lords.

At the same time, the Antoniazzi abortion up to birth amendment, which passed in the House of Commons in June, is moving through the House of Lords as part of the Crime and Policing Bill.

Second Reading will take place in a matter of weeks. It will then go on to Committee and Report Stages, where we will be up against the UK’s largest abortion providers – BPAS and MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes) – who are expected to lobby for even more extreme changes to our abortion laws.

If the Antoniazzi amendment becomes law, it would no longer be illegal for women to perform their own abortions for any reason – including sex-selective purposes – at any point up to and during birth.

Thousands of vulnerable lives - at the beginning and the end of life - depend on what happens next. We must do everything in our power to stop these radical proposals.

WE NEED YOUR HELP

Our campaign against the Leadbeater Bill in the House of Lords is working, but the work we have already done has significantly stretched our limited resources.

We are now stepping up our efforts against the assisted suicide Bill while launching a major push to stop the abortion up to birth amendment in the Lords. 

To fight effectively on both fronts, we aim to raise £183,750 by midnight this Sunday (5 October 2025).

Every donation, large or small, will help protect lives, and UK taxpayers can add 25p to every £1 through Gift Aid at no extra cost.

Will you donate now to help protect vulnerable lives from these two major threats?

URGENT
APPEAL
to protect vulnerable lives

Help stop three major anti-life threats.

Help fight the next phase of our battles against major assisted suicide and abortion up to birth threats.