The Care Not Killing Alliance includes over 40 professional groups, faith groups and human rights groups.
Q1. Do you support the general aim of the proposed Bill (as outlined above)? Please indicate 'yes/no/undecided' and explain the reasons for your response.'
No. We are opposed to the general aim of this proposed bill for the following reasons:
1. Just over a year ago, a very similar bill, the End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill, was comprehensively defeated in a free vote at the Scottish Parliament in December 2010, by a margin of 85 votes to 16. This should have settled the debate in Scotland for a generation.
2. The previous bill was heavily criticised by MSPs, medical practitioners, palliative care charities, religious groups and legal experts for being both unclear and unethical. Furthermore, 87% of all who made written submissions to the scrutinising committee were opposed to it. The committee also overwhelmingly recommended that it be rejected.
3. The new Bill is to be modelled on a system currently in place in the US state of Oregon where the annual number of assisted suicides has increased dramatically by over 450% since being legalised in 1997, where one in six of those dying are depressed, less than one in 20 receive psychiatric assessments and some patients have actually been denied medical care and offered assisted suicide as a cheaper alternative.
4. The terms in the proposal, especially with regard to those 'terminal conditions' to be included in its remit are vague, imprecise and ambiguous.
5. Any change in the law to allow assisted suicide would place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives for fear of being a financial, emotional or care burden upon others. This would especially affect people who are disabled, elderly, sick or depressed.
6. Persistent requests for euthanasia are extremely rare if people are properly cared for so our key priority must be to ensure that good care addressing people's physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs is accessible to all.
7. The present law making assisted suicide and euthanasia illegal is clear and right and does not need changing. The penalties it holds in reserve act as a strong deterrent to exploitation and abuse whilst giving discretion to prosecutors and judges in hard cases.
8. Hard cases make bad law. Even in a free democratic society there are limits to human freedom and the law must not be changed to accommodate the wishes of a small number of desperate and determined people.
9. The pressure people will feel to end their lives if assisted suicide or euthanasia is legalised will be greatly accentuated at this time of economic recession with families and health budgets under pressure. Elder abuse and neglect by families, carers and institutions is real and dangerous and this is why strong laws are necessary.
10. The number of British people travelling abroad to commit assisted suicide is very small (150 in ten years) compared to numbers in countries and US states that have legalised assisted suicide or euthanasia.
11. If assisted suicide or euthanasia is legalised any 'safeguards' against abuse, such as limiting it to certain categories of people, are unlikely to work. Instead, once any so-called 'right-to-die' is established we will see incremental extension with pressure being applied to expand the categories of people who qualify for it.
12. The vast majority of UK doctors are opposed to legalising euthanasia along with the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Association for Palliative Medicine and the British Geriatric Society.
13. All major disability rights groups in Britain (including RADAR, SCOPE, UKDPC, NCIL and Not Dead Yet UK) oppose any change in the law believing it will lead to increased prejudice towards them and increased pressure on them to end their lives.
14. Changes to the law of this kind should not be driven by public opinion but by serious informed debate. Public opinion polls can be easily manipulated when high media profile (and often celebrity-driven) 'hard cases' are used to elicit emotional reflex responses without consideration of the strong arguments against legalisation
Q2-10. As we reject the proposal in principle these questions, which all relate to process and detail are not relevant to our submission.
Conclusion
This proposal is flawed in principle and Care Not Killing calls upon the Scottish Parliament to reject it at the earliest opportunity.
23 April 2012
The answer is really in more care, love, pain relief and dignity in a natuarel ending to ones life and not in killing!
we cannot allow legalised murder in a civilised society and to think of asking Her Majesty the Queen to bring it to parliament is treasonable in my eyes. Only God has the right to give life and take away life.
because no one has the right to decide either when they are born or when they die. As a committed christian I believe only God Almighty has this right. Human life is sacred and precious and these days no one needs to be suffering in extreme pain with all the drugs that are available. Instead we should be looking for different ways to make an unbearable life more bearable to help and support these sufferers. Compassion palliative nursing and true caring are needed in our country not murder.
We need to look again at the wonder of life, not just at how we can end it whe we feel like it .
Scotland up to now has in a lot of ways shown the way in adhering to the biblical standards it would be a shame to compromise that witness and follow the wishey washy example of being all things to all people.
On a practical level I feel it would tend to change the urgency of finding treatment to cure and ease these complaints and to euthanize or assist suicide is quite often the cheapest option for state and family I can speak from experience my Mother died from Cancer and it would have been cheaper in monetary terms and emotionally for me but the option was not there so i did not have the temptation to murder my mother even for seemingly her benefit
There will always be some difficult cases and grey areas - for which there were always adequate principles and for which the professionals have always had their guidelines (which the public in general understood and accepted).
I believe so strongly that this proposed Bill should be opposed that I would take the stance of the suffragettes and fight it every inch of the way. This is a bill that has no understanding of the Pandora's box it would unleash and would leave the vulnerable,weak and those at a point in their lives of depression or mental illness exposed to a legal machinery that can manipulate and justify termination of their life supported by them for all the wrong reasons.
Why has this bill been allowed to come to the fore again when it was so soundly defeated only a short while ago?