This letter and others on these pages give examples of good points to raise in writing to MPs or Peers about the Joffe Bill. Put the ideas in your own words and add a personal angle based on your own experience of the issues.

Dear...

I am writing to express my concern about the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, which aims to legalise assisted suicide and receives its second reading in the House of Lords on 12 May.

The law is a blunt instrument, and there will always be individual cases, usually those that have not been managed well, which raise questions about assisted suicide. But the majority of people with terminal illness die comfortably with good care and hard cases make bad laws.

Any law allowing assisted suicide would threaten the trust necessary for the doctor–patient relationship to function, place pressure on patients to request early death, and introduce a slippery slope to voluntary and involuntary euthanasia.

Such legislation would also be impossible to police, might well undermine the development of palliative-care services, and could lead to patients being incited to request suicide for economic reasons by family, carers, or society at large.

I urge you to oppose this bill and to fight for better services for the terminally ill

Yours sincerely