The risks of legalising assisted suicide are simply too great
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By James Mildred
MPs will again debate assisted suicide today during a backbench business debate. The debate won’t change the law and there won’t be a vote, but it will provide an opportunity for the key arguments on both sides to be heard.
This is a very sensitive and challenging issue. The stories of intense suffering at the end of life provoke only sympathy and understanding. We fear a bad death and so we look to find ways of controlling the circumstances, so suffering is minimised, and people are empowered to make their own choices. But hard cases make bad laws and MPs need to balance the desires of a minority, with the pressures that would fall on thousands upon thousands of vulnerable people. The current law, which prohibits any form of assisted suicide or euthanasia is the safest way of doing so.
Time after time over the last decade, MPs and Peers have consistently rejected assisted suicide proposals. This is no accident. There are powerful reasons why resisting attempts to ...
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