Ask Peers to speak and vote against assisted suicide on Friday

This Friday, 22 October, the House of Lords will debate whether to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales.

Baroness Meacher’s Assisted Dying Bill will receive its Second Reading, which is the stage where Peers can debate the principles of a bill. This is the perfect opportunity for Peers to highlight that assisted suicide is unnecessary, dangerous and extreme.

It is imperative that as many Peers as possible speak against assisted suicide at this stage of the bill. The other side is well-funded and well-organised, and they will do their best to fill the Speaker’s List with advocates for assisted suicide. We need to show that there is substantial public and parliamentary opposition to ever introducing assisted suicide in this country.

Baroness Meacher’s bill would allow for someone who is terminally ill (reasonably expected to die within six months) to request and be provided with a lethal prescription of assisted suicide drugs, following assessment by two doctors and approval from the High Court.

Her proposal ignores that it is difficult to accurately predict the outcome of a terminal illness, specifically the amount of time one will live with such a diagnosis. For example, research has found that the accuracy of prognoses for terminal illness can range from 78% to a mere 23%.

Further, comparisons with the small number of jurisdictions that have legalised assisted suicide reveal that the recourse to life-ending treatment becomes increasingly normalised over time, often in contradiction to the original rhetoric, and has led to some of these jurisdictions allowing the youth and those with mental and non-terminal illnesses to access assisted suicide.

No doctors’ groups in the UK support changing the law, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Physicians, the British Geriatric Society, and the Association for Palliative Medicine.

Please enter your postcode in the box above to email Peers asking them to speak and vote against assisted suicide this Friday.