From: The Catholic Herald. (image: Official portrait of Baroness_May/ Wikimedia CC)
Former British Prime Minister Theresa May has given her damning assessment of the proposed assisted suicide Bill that has reached the House of Lords.
The first day of debate on Friday lasted seven hours without pause, during which nearly 95 members of the House of Lords spoke, it is reported.
With 190 peers expected to speak in total over the two days that the Bill will be debated in the upper chamber of the UK Parliament, it means that the ground is set for what would be the longest debate featuring the most speakers for a Private Members’ Bill heard by the House of Lords in its history.
“This is not an ‘assisted dying’ bill, it is an assisted suicide bill,” Baroness May of Maidenhead said, addressing the House of Lords on 12 September.
“As a society we believe that suicide is wrong.”
To illustrate this, Baroness May noted that the government has a national suicide prevention strategy, and that “we bemoan” the number of young people lured into suicide by the likes of social media and what they read on the Internet.