By John Sebastian Milbank, Public Discourse.
Euthanasia is coming to Britain. It is arriving slowly, step by step, but it has the awful inevitability of a battering ram hammering against a splintering gate.
There is an Assisted Dying bill currently traveling through Parliament. It passed through the Commons, with the last chance to stop it falling upon the House of Lords, which is primarily a revising chamber that is generally unwilling to block legislation. This marks, incredibly, the eighth attempt to push through euthanasia in the UK since 2010. “Once in a generation” choices have a way of being offered over and over until the “right” decision is reached.
The bill, proposed by British Labour Party member Kim Leadbeater, is a private member’s bill, meaning that it technically has nothing to do with the government. Yet in practice it has had the tacit backing and approval of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The bill is presented as being narrowly about pain relief for the terminally ill, but it permits any patient who’s been given six months to live the option to seek an assisted death for any reason. Critics have pointed out that as written, the bill will allow vulnerable patients, including those with anorexia and learning disabilities, to seek euthanasia.
Parallels have been drawn to Canada, which passed a very similar law, initially restricted to the dying. But legal challenges and campaigning saw Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) extended to those without terminal conditions, and there are now plans afoot to extend it to the mentally ill as well. Regular stories surface of patients who sought an assisted death after years of inadequate healthcare and delays for those seeking procedures and treatment. The UK’s NHS, with its long waiting lists and rationing, is worryingly similar to Canada’s struggling healthcare sector.