by Venice Allan, spiked
Assisted-suicide activists have co-opted the language of ‘autonomy’ and ‘rights’ to promote their grim vision.
Assisted-dying campaigners are still raging at the failure of their sixth attempt to introduce assisted suicide since 2003. After nearly a hundred hours of gruelling and emotional debate, Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill thankfully ran out of time when the Labour government’s first parliamentary session came to an end earlier this month.
Accusing peers of blocking the democratic process and damaging the reputation of the upper chamber, supporters of the bill are on manoeuvres to bring the bill back. Activists insist that this legislation is a matter of compassion, and they have co-opted pro-choice language to make their case. Assisted dying, they claim, offers ‘choice at the end of life’. Opponents, therefore, are ‘anti-choice’. Thus, abortion and assisted suicide have been pitched together as a package that lawmakers on the ‘right side of history’ must support. As separate legislation on both of these issues unfortunately coincided earlier this year in the parliamentary schedule, campaigners have deliberately conflated the two.