Letter to your MP and MSP on Assisted dying
Please use this letter to let your MP and MSP know how you feel about the Assisted dying bills going through both Parliaments.
Please copy and paste this letter, which can be used for both Edinburgh and London and send it to your political representative showing them the depth of feeling against these bills.
This letter was written by Timothy Mayer, a young Catholic man, lawyer and writer who works in London. Last summer he canvassed for Angus MacDonald who is now MP for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire.
Dear
I believe it is truly shameful that our lower House is currently considering encouraging swinging open the door to killing our most vulnerable. As a concerned constituent, I am compelled to express my deep reservations concerning Kim Leadbeater's assisted suicide bill (the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill) and earnestly urge you to vote against it.
Or
Liam McArthur’s assisted suicide bill has just passed its first vote in Holyrood. If passed, this bill would allow Scottish residents deemed terminally ill, following the approval of two doctors, to kill themselves with drugs provided by the NHS. If you are an MSP I implore you to vote against what would cause irreversible harm to our country.
I implore you to consider the profound ethical implications and societal consequences of both pieces of legislation, which I believe fundamentally violate our shared moral duty to protect the vulnerable and uphold the sanctity of human life.
Understanding Euthanasia and its relation to the UK:
A pressing concern of our time is the alarming rise in suicides across the country. Various charities and organisations offer different services aimed to combat this tragic trend. The NHS also offers related support, and while some efforts are more effective than others, I never thought that the answer given to such suffering – using our very own NHS – would instead be to facilitate suicide.
Imagine someone trying to jump off a busy bridge to end their life. Our instinct in such a moment is to intervene – people rush to stop them, traffic halts, and those nearby do everything possible to persuade the individual to step back to safety. We recognise instinctively that if the person jumps and dies, it would be the worst mistake of their life because it would be the last mistake he or she ever made. We stop the person irrespective of location: whether that attempt at suicide be off a bridge, in front of a train or in a hospital, it does not change the gravity of what is at stake.
Yet, when it comes to assisted suicide, a disturbing double standard emerges. It becomes clear that proponents of this troublesome worldview believe that some lives are worth saving – such as the vulnerable who attempt to jump off a bridge, while others are deemed not worth saving – such as the vulnerable who get furtively killed behind hospital doors. This inconsistency reveals a dangerous shift in how human life is valued, that some lives are only worth saving under certain conditions, while others are dismissed or actively ended.
We live in a time when language is often weaponised and manipulated to obscure reality. Such is true when the rhetoric of euthanasia is scrutinised. It claims to relieve suffering. However, to claim to relieve suffering but instead end all possibility of any experience only kicks the can down the road. It sidesteps the deeper issues that underlie suffering instead offering a quick final solution. Instead of fostering hope, it normalises the idea that death is an acceptable solution to pain – an attitude that fundamentally undermines any possibility of there being something to protect in the value of human life. This exposes the true nature of euthanasia: it is not the compassionate answer that it dresses up as, but a troubling abdication of our moral responsibility to care for and support those vulnerable people in our society who are hurting.
The leading campaign group for legalising assisted dying in the UK are Dignity in Dying. They first emerged as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society in 1936. Using the word voluntary was simply a concession by the group in order to help assisted dying legislation through parliament (think they aren’t making concessions now?). The group’s founding member, the Labour peer Lord Arthur Ponsonby, put forward the Voluntary Euthanasia Bill in 1936. In this Bill he argued against the ‘mistaken notion’ that the Bill was about sparing people pain, but insisted that it was intended for people that “are no longer of any use” and are “being a burden” on society. This rhetoric reflected an outlook where the brutal utilitarianism of eugenics (which is intrinsically connected to euthanasia) had not yet been discredited by the Nazis’ horrors around the corner. Evidently, many of our leaders have again forgotten the true danger euthanasia brings.
This reveals the view on life that those who are pro euthanasia hold explicitly or implicitly: that life has value only to the extent that it is productive and brings pleasure. Death is considered senseless if it suddenly interrupts a life still open to a future of new and interesting experiences. But becomes a ‘rightful liberation’ once life is held to be no longer meaningful because it is filled with pain and inexorably doomed to even greater suffering. Such liberation is reminiscent of many other modern ideologies that seek to ‘liberate’ themselves from their identity. Therefore, euthanasia is a tragic symptom of an ethic that claims to dictate who should live and who should die. Even when motivated by sentiments of a misconstrued compassion or of a misunderstood preservation of dignity, euthanasia, actually eliminates the person instead of relieving the individual suffering.
Therefore, euthanasia must be called a false mercy, and indeed a disturbing ‘perversion’ of mercy. True ‘compassion’ leads to sharing another’s pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear. Moreover, the act of euthanasia appears all the more perverse if carried out by those, like relatives, who are supposed to treat a family member with patience and love, or by those, such as doctors, who by virtue of their specific profession are supposed to care for the sick person even in the most painful terminal stages. These usual safeguards to the vulnerable instead combine together to create an immense pressure to ‘just make the choice’ and die.
Those same doctors, whose very role would be reversed under this legislation, would transition from proponent of health, to arbiter of death. Little could be done to stop doctors who are eager to hand out death certificates because under the proposed UK bill in Section 5(6) if the medical practitioner is “unwilling” then they must, by law, “ensure that the person is directed” to someone to have that discussion of how they can be killed. Likewise, it is likely that religious orders will be forced out of care homes and hospices as they may otherwise be forced to permit assisted suicide taking place on the same premises.[2]
This will create a perverse incentive structure if implemented in the UK for doctors to encourage patients to take their lives to ease pressures on the NHS. This is cited in the paper Legislation on Assisted Dying: A Slippery Slope?[3] Such patients are already referred to as ‘bed blockers’ and seen as a drain on an already struggling NHS. Section 5(2) of the bill gives permission to these practitioners to raise the question to patients even if they have never been mentioned it previously. “Nothing” stops these practitioners from encouraging death to the forecasted clientele of this bill – much to the glee and excitement of the profiteering euthanasia industry who will insidiously push this bill to maximise their own profits.
In section 31, the bill states that it will criminalize anyone who “by dishonesty, coercion, or pressure, induces another person” to be euthanized. For since the committee stage, provisions have been introduced claiming to provide adequate safeguards. Yet, the very nature of such legislation ensures that individuals within its scope will inevitably face pressure—regardless of the flimsy safeguards purportedly in place. They will face pressure from the doctor they trust suggesting they should consider killing themselves and they will face pressure from the family who want their inheritance early. As such they may see choosing to kill themselves as a greater sacrifice for their society and family. Therefore, even if one believes that there is a one in a million person who they personally feel should be able to access euthanasia, they must also consider that giving that one person access means that everyone else in that bracket will face immense pressures to choose an early death.
This is not how we should treat and pressure those who are struggling. Such a worldview forgets the great love and joy that can often be experienced with the vulnerable in our society. This joy can often be experienced to an even greater extent as such persons draw us out from the bustle of life and back into a perspective of what truly matters.
It should also be mentioned that “medical practitioner” need not be a doctor and will only be defined once in law. Therefore, we can expect nurses, pharmacists or even in time specialist professionals training in the administration of the lethal dose to be qualified to tick the box for those deemed suitable for death. Such specialists will likely be operating out of specialist clinics positioned in view of old people’s homes to maximise profits and nudge prospective clientele to use their ‘services’. To understand the financial incentives behind the huge money that can be made because of euthanasia read this article that I wrote.[4]
The Slippery Slopes:
Kim Leadbeater, among other promoters of the bill to legalise assisted suicide, claims that they are “the strictest in the world”[5] This strongly implies that there is no possibility of a slippery slope in the bill. This is problematic when faced with the evidence supplied by other countries around the world that have already legalised euthanasia – which all began with ‘stringent safeguards.’ Since passing legalisation, every country that has done so has chosen to expand that supply. The power of normalisation and encouragement from those wanting this blood money, whether they are the inheritance-ready relatives or those indirectly making a big sack of profit from everything related to the killing, is already evident. There are various reasons for this slippery slope, here I will highlight three.
The Slippery Slope of Suffering:
Proponents of assisted suicide frequently cite suffering as the reason to legalise it. But if this is the primary reason then why, as this bill proposes, limit it to only those with 6 months left to live? For there are surely those who are suffering greatly but have more than 6 months left to live, such as those with chronic pain. Additionally, why wait 14 days to die, if someone is facing unbearable suffering and the bill’s proponents are right; then indeed they should be killed that instant — if the pain is more important than their life as is claimed.
Therefore, If the argument to legalise assisted suicide is based on people’s suffering, then those who are suffering but have longer than six months left to live should be allowed it too. Each country has asked these questions that are perfectly logical and become more so as it is normalised in the public that some may die and others not. Hence, laws are loosened, safeguards lowered, and we start to see the empirical slippery slope unfold as such practices become commonplace.
The Slippery Slope of Autonomy:
It is also necessary to be aware of the slippery slope in the claim of it being all about autonomy for the person to decide. This slippery slope demonstrates a steady, perhaps inevitable, progression toward something even more terrifying — something that becomes increasingly likely if we continue down the dark path we are currently on. The trajectory is hinted at by the experiences in Belgium and the Netherlands (as the empirical slippery slope below will describe) where newborns may be euthanized if those making the decision deem it appropriate. These are decisions made by others on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves, where newborn babies may be killed if it seems appropriate to those who decide on their behalf. Those who decide on their behalf.
And just like that the slippery slope of autonomy reveals itself! The culture of death which Pope saint John Paul 11 reveals itself in all its hatred. If decisions about life and death are made on behalf of the most vulnerable — such as infants who lack the capacity to decide — then it can no longer be about respecting individual autonomy. Instead, it becomes about what others determine is best. This hailed autonomy may be put into the hands of another if they are deemed better to decide for who should die and who should live. But this attitude—that others know better—already applied to newborns, can easily be extended to adults as well.
The danger lies in the assumption that if someone else believes they know what’s best, then their decision should override the individual’s own choice. This reveals a fundamental truth: it has never truly been about individual autonomy. It is, at its core, about the decisions made by others regarding who should live and who should die. Rooted in the same idolatry of self—where personal judgment and authority take precedence over inherent human dignity—this mindset elevates the act of deciding itself as the highest good, justifying actions that undermine the very sanctity of life. Such a line of thinking is hauntingly similar to the most egregious corridors of history, but yet we as a country are considering implementing this from the thin end of the wedge.
Therefore, the slippery slope of the autonomy of self reveals a frightening truth: that you are either against euthanasia or complicit in involuntary euthanasia, where others assume the authority to decide whether to end a person's life. That is the true reason for the unknown of the huge ‘grey area’ for euthanasia of where to draw the line. The only coherent boundaries are either to refuse the practice entirely, safeguarding the sanctity of life within our society, or to accept that permitting euthanasia inherently entails relinquishing control over life and death—placing the power to decide who shall live and who shall die in the hands of others, regardless of the motivations behind those decisions.
The Empirical Slippery Slope:
The empirical slippery slope is one that over time relaxes the laws making access more and more available. First to mention is that the empirical slippery slope is alive and active in legislation passing as we speak. A few days ago the French Parliament applauded itself after voting to legalise euthanasia (/coerced into being put down) by the state for being homeless, autistic or disabled. While the French claim to find a balance of who they should and shouldn’t kill it comes back to the same fundamental issue as raised by the Family Union. They denounced the search for a so-called ‘balance’, this word is a “trap because it assumes that the very principle of euthanasia is legitimate and that the debate should only focus on the conditions.”
“Euthanasia and assisted suicide are in themselves acts of unspeakable violence. One never kills out of love. Love does not kill. The supreme transgression of the principle “Thou shalt not kill”, valid in all societies and at all times, must remain a cornerstone of our social foundation,”
The empirical slippery slope can take place very quickly and alarmingly even without the voter’s consent. Sometimes that is due to ‘small’ changes in the wording of bill or in the example of Canada the Supreme Court ruled that a prohibition on assisted dying was contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 2016. These laws were not supposed to be expanded over time and were supposed to be “narrowly targeted to comply with the Supreme Court’s judgment in Carter, focusing on reasonable foreseeability of death.”[6] – Remind you of any bills currently being put into law?
Currently, suicide in the UK accounts for one out of every 125 deaths per year – a catastrophically high number. Canada on the other hand, three years after legalising MAiD in 2019, accounted for one out of every 50 deaths. Then in 2022, that number doubled to more than one out of every 25 deaths making assisted suicide, one of Canada’s leading causes of death, surpassing car accidents, and even diseases like influenza and pneumonia. Increased numbers year on year is a common phenomenon in countries where euthanasia is legalised. While the barriers to entry for eligibility for assisted suicide loosen, so also it becomes normalised in the culture where pressure builds on those eligible that feel they must justify why they should not die. First hand examples are seen from when a Canadian veteran phoned Veterans Affairs Canada to get treatment for his combat related PTSD and a traumatic brain injury, he expected help to get better and get his life back. Instead, he got an unexpected and unwanted offer to help him end it through medically assisted death.[7] Likewise, a Canadian woman was denied cancer treatment but offered suicide instead. These anecdotal stories are just a handful taken from countless other examples across the country.[8]
Moreover, Canada, which was meant to be regulated by “stringent and well-enforced safeguards.” (Carter v Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5, [2015]), which had a four-part criteria will now be expanding the law to include those with a mental illness in 2027. The number of MAiD requests that are unsuccessful has fallen each year where in 2019 8.5% were unsuccessful and by 2022 only 3.5%. There is also an average growth rate of 31.1% from 2019 to 2022 which is only increasing further.[9] Equally concerning is the speed at which requests are accepted. In theory other options of palliative care are supposed to be explored, but with easier access through different law reforms it now only takes about 11 days between the date of request and the act of the assisted suicide. A reflection of the normalisation is evident in the numerous advertisements that glorify euthanasia even within the emergency rooms of hospitals as shown in this cited article.[10] in Canada MAiD does not currently apply to children but there have been, and continue, to be attempts to change this restriction – at the current rate they likely will succeed. It has now got to a state where the main reason cited by recipients for undergoing MAiD is poverty or housing uncertainty.
One comparison that starkly underscores just how harrowing these numbers are, more than any other, is when they are contrasted with the COVID-19 death count. The pre-2019 numbers of deaths caused by privatised suicide in Canada surpass an exaggerated count of the number of deaths caused by Covid-19 at its peak. Similar numbers, lest we forget, that the UK government used to justify a nationwide lockdown to protect those that the Bill on assisted suicide seeks to open the doors of death to anyway. Such a realisation only highlights the upside-down world we live in — especially when it is remembered that both of these numbers largely come from the same group, the vulnerable.
In the Netherlands and Belgium assisted suicide has been legal since 2002. Those who have an established terminal diagnosis, unbearable suffering, or a mental illness are eligible for assisted suicide. Children are also eligible. This includes newborns. Under the Groningen Protocol, euthanasia is even considered for infants not dependent on intensive treatment, but with a hopeless prognosis in which a very poor quality of life is anticipated and is associated with sustained unbearable suffering in the judgment of the parents and medical experts. The Netherlands has now proposed extending the law to elderly people with “completed lives” as cited by Professor John Keown in the paper titled Voluntary Euthanasia & Physician-assisted Suicide: The Two ‘Slippery Slope’ Arguments.[11]
Oregon, held up by legislators of this bill as the gold standard, has had post-legislative expansion on the interpretation of ‘terminal illness’ meaning that assisted suicide has been granted for anorexia, hernias, diabetes and arthritis.
Switzerland has the same access to assisted suicide as the Netherlands and Belgium, which includes eligibility for children. The dehumanisation of these systems for suicide and lack of respect is exemplified in the suicide pods that Switzerland has just approved use of. They function by using nitrogen to asphyxiate people to death. The pods are a coffin-like device that can be transported to different locations for ease for the people wanting to end their life. Once in the pod the person will press the button themselves in order to commence the asphyxiation by the gas. Those advocates of such pods for assisted suicide would also likely oppose the use of them for capital punishment for murders. Likely asserting that it is a cruel and inhumane punishment that should not be inflicted on anyone. In fact, earlier this year an inmate in Alabama was executed using such a method where prior to the execution the spiritual advisor said, “It needs to be perfectly clear to the world that this is terrifying.”[12] As the nitrogen flowed, the five journalists allowed to watch said that the victim shook his head as his body rose on the gurney for about two minutes. This is what Switzerland thinks we should do to our sick and vulnerable simply because they feel like a burden – which one third of Canadian’s cite as their reason for MAiD.[13]
Many of these countries are reminiscent of the “merciful death” extolled by the National Socialists in the Aktion T4 programme designed to implement the physical elimination of the disabled in the Third Reich in 1939 as well as the evils of the USSR. Is this what we want for the future of the UK?
Possible incompatibility with the ECHR:
Article 14:
This problem of the difficulty to draw the line for who should and should not have access to assisted suicide is highlighted when we account for article 14 of the ECHR as applied to article 8. Article 14 prohibits discrimination between people in the enjoyment of convention rights. Therefore, if Parliament passes this bill allowing only certain groups access to assisted suicide, and it cannot be objectively and reasonably justified why people are not entitled to greater enjoyment of their article 8(1) rights; then the law will fall under serious scrutiny in relation to article 14. Even higher levels of scrutiny will be given relating to article 14 rights for disabilities as seen in the UK Supreme Court (R (SC, CB and 8 children) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2021] UKSC 26, [112] and [136]). Although Strasbourg appears to accept straight bans on assisted suicide, the fact that the forthcoming bill only allows those with a terminal illness and 6 months left to live means it will very likely meet the threshold of anxious scrutiny of the bill under article 14. This appears even more likely because the bill does not currently allow for disabilities to be a reason for access to assisted suicide. This could mean that a domestic court would issue a Declaration of Incompatibility (DIO). These do not affect the validity of an act of Parliament, but do indicate that any challenge to domestic law by the Strasbourg Court is likely to succeed. Consequently, as a matter of international law, the UK would likely be expected to amend the law to align it with article 14. On the other hand if the Supreme Court issued a DIO, it would be possible for the government to amend the law extending beyond its limits without the need to pass a new Act of Parliament.[14] Therefore, as a matter of law, the scope of the bill could be drastically widened and thus instantly lower the theoretically high safeguards that the bill possesses. For more information on this possible breach, I recommend reading Phillip Murray’s article on the issue.[15]
Article 2:
There is also a possibility that the NHS providing assisted suicide would breach article 2. Article 2 has two distinct substantive obligations “the general obligation to protect by law the right to life, and the prohibition of intentional deprivation of life, delimited by a list of exceptions.”[16] This bill will not breach the positive obligation which by design is nebulous in nature to afford States a margin of appreciation in deciding how to fulfil the obligation. Additionally, the Strasbourg court has held that that the positive obligation does not forbid assisted suicide. However, the Court has not ruled that the State itself doing so is in compliance with the negative obligation and euthanasia is not under the list of exceptions. This negative obligation does not apply to third parties which is why other countries with legal assisted suicide have not encountered it. Therefore, convention law must be applied. Therefore, even as part of a well-regulated scheme with appropriate safeguards, the negative obligation prohibits the State from conducting assisted suicide itself. This obligation is explicit and clear in article 2 meaning there is no scope for a margin of appreciation to give greater leeway. The only way this could be avoided is if the Strasbourg Court developed its case-law to create an exception. But this would also be very difficult given that on all previous occasions that the court has made exceptions using the doctrine of the waiver it has been about procedural and not substantive rights. Also, the fact that it is a living instrument cannot as President Sicilianos says be used for interpretations that are contra legem. In other words, it would be highly unlikely that the court would be able to avoid this negative obligation for the state not to conduct assisted suicide. Therefore, it appears likely that allowing for state run assisted suicide would be prohibited under article 2 of the ECHR. This has the potential to make euthanasia a privatised scheme open to the free market, and like any private company it will look to increase profits which will only increase the dangers of killing for profit. For more information on this I would recommend reading Rajiv Shah’s article on the issue.[17]
Also worth mentioning is that on the side of the legislature, the last time MPs voted on this issue it was overwhelmingly rejected by 330 votes to 118. Although sadly it appears that we may not have the kind of government that actually protects its country’s most vulnerable anymore.
Final words from the House of Lords Select Committee:
John Finnis sums the danger we will enter if the bill is passed when he addressed the House of Lords Select Committee on Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill in 2005. Discussing legislative proposals to depart from the existing law’s “bright line” against assisted suicide, he said:
“In the new situation, any attempt to draw the line is necessarily artificial. The principles on which any attempted line would be based undermine each other and subvert the attempt to hold a line. If autonomy is the principal or main concern, why is the lawful killing restricted to terminal illness and unbearable suffering? If suffering is the principle or concern, why is the lawful killing restricted to terminal illness? Why must the suffering be unbearable if there is real and persistent discomfort? If suffering is unbearable, why should one have to wait for 14 days? If suffering and terminal prognosis are the concern, why is relief restricted to those who are capable of asking for it? Each of those questions is … a reason for doubting the rationality of any proposed line alternative to the present principled lines.”[18]
In conclusion, the assisted suicide bill represents a fundamental shift in our society's approach to life, dignity, and the role of the state in matters of life and death. It is fraught with ethical difficulties, legal uncertainties, and the potential for unintended consequences that would have far-reaching implications. I implore you to consider these points carefully and to stand against the bill, voicing the concerns of those who see this legislation as a dive in the wrong direction. It is important to know that there are only three parties pushing this bill: those who will gain a huge financial benefit from this type of killing, those who believe that eugenics is a good that should be pursued, or those who are genuinely ignorant about the evil that this bill would bring upon our country.
Thank you for your consideration and taking the time to read this. I would be greatly reassured to know that you will speak out and vote against such legislation. I look forward to receiving your response.
Yours sincerely,
Timothy Mayer
Thank you for commenting. I will send you an email directly.
Thanks for this very helpful letter. I have followed this debate here in Scotland since 2015, when Holyrood said they needed to improve palliative care provision here in Scotland. That has not happen and we are still waiting. Here in Orkney a safe home death is not an option. Both the bill being purposed are unsafe and lack detail, which was clear from the debate yesterday at Westminster. Assisted dying is what I call palliative care. What is being purposed is in fact Physician Assisted Suicide. That is a Dr will provide medication that I can take to end my life. Call it what it is - it is not assisted dying. This is a euphemism used by DiD to confuse the public. Our politicians and the public need to be very clear about the unintended consequences about the purposed bills. This letter goes someway in helping that conversation. Thank you