The UK House of Lords will debate Lord Falconer's assisted suicide bill this Friday the 18th of July.This is the third in a series of three blog posts about the debate. Continue reading

The UK House of Lords will debate Lord Falconer's assisted suicide bill this Friday the 18th of July. This is the second in a series of three blog posts about the debate.UK: Assisted Suicide Bill: "Eligible" Patients May Have Years, Even Decades, to Live. Continue reading

The UK House of Lords will debate Lord Falconer's assisted suicide bill this Friday the 18th of July. This is the first in a series fo three blog posts about the debate.Earlier we also posted an article from a UK Newspaper where Prof Boer, a Dutch former supporter of euthanasia now admits that he got it wrong and urges the UK not to follow the Dutch path. You can read that story HERE. Continue reading

This post originally appeared on the blog of Neil Crowther - making rights make sense. Looking at the broader issue of the effect that the UK Assisted Dying Bill wold have on the social contract with the aged and infirmed, Crowther makes observations that hold true for all euthanasia & assisted suicide legislation:  Signal FailureThe Assisted Dying Bill will receive its Second Reading in the House of Lords on 18 July. I've written about 'assisted dying' before here and here. Having recently engaged in lengthy debate with advocates for the Bill, albeit within the 140 character confines of Twitter, I wanted to add a few further reflections on their arguments. Continue reading

This assessment of the Falconer Bill being debated in the UK House of Lords at the moment first appeared on the website :Catholic Voices Continue reading

Tanni Grey-Thompson A number of prominent disability activists in the UK have been warning in the British media over the last few days that Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill is dangerous and puts people at risk.This includes nine-time paralympian and holder of 11 paralympic gold medals and now British Peer, Tanni Grey-Thompson in a recent article in the Continue reading

Lord Falconer's assisted dying bill was introduced into the British House of Lords overnight. This insightful reflection in by Baroness Sheila Hollins, British Peer and former president of both the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Psychiatrists first appeared in the Continue reading

Mary Warnock, for example, often described without irony as "Britain's leading moral philosopher" has opened the door to the State becoming a mass killer of its older, sicker citizens. As well as supporting euthanasia for the terminally ill, in a magazine interview she recommended a much wider use of the lethal injection or poisoned broth. "If somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die," she has said, "because they're a burden to their family, or the State, then I think they too should be allowed to die." Lord Falconer of Thoroton would not admit to such an ambition for his much more modest assisted suicide Bill, now in its early parliamentary stages, but we shouldn't be under any illusions about the journey it would set the country on. Wherever assisted suicide (or any other form of euthanasia) has been legalised for narrow circumstances, a loophole opens up through which convoys of hearses are driven.In the Netherlands people with early dementia are already being visited by mobile euthanasia units. In Belgium the law allows euthanasia only when, technically, "the patient is in a medically futile condition of constant unbearable suffering". Wesley J. Smith, of the US-based Centre for Bioethics and Culture, has listed examples of ways in which the law has been interpreted much more expansively. Continue reading

Baroness Jane Campbell of Surbiton , disability advocate, convenor of NotDeadYet UK Continue reading

This article was written by Dr Peter Saunders and published  on his blog  Continue reading