Next Friday, Members of Parliament will vote on Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which would legalise assisted dying for adults in England and Wales who are terminally ill and expected to die within six months. Naturally, the Bill has attracted a great deal of controversy and criticism, and is opposed by a wide range of parliamentarians across party divides.
The progress of Ms Leadbeater’s Bill is of great importance to us in Scotland, too. We currently have Liam McArthur MSP’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill in its initial committee stage at Holyrood, debating the same issues. However the Scottish Parliament chooses to vote on Mr McArthur’s Bill, if Ms Leadbeater’s Bill does not pass into law the implementation of Mr McArthur’s would become significantly more difficult.
As the Scottish Government has pointed out, the powers that would provide for an “approved substance” to be used to carry out assisted dying in Scotland are reserved to Westminster, and that substance’s use would need to be allowed by the UK Government. The two bills, from a Scottish point of view, are intertwined at this point.
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Objections to both have ranged from the principled to the pragmatic. On the strongest, principled end, many parliamentarians of faith oppose the bill on the grounds of religious prohibitions against the taking of life, including one’s own, but many parliamentarians who do not hold religious beliefs are equally opposed to assisted dying. On the other end, plenty of parliamentarians who, in principle, believe that assisted dying should be legalised have serious concerns about safeguards and the........