Assisted Dying Bill has too many shortfalls to become legislation - Sue Webber
Readers might know from previous columns that having initially been supportive in principle, I’ve been convinced for some time that the Assisted Dying Bill going through its final stages in the Scottish Parliament cannot be passed.
From the growing number of MSPs who have also been convinced to oppose the legislation, now including the Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay, it seems clear to me that the more MSPs delve into the fine detail, the more they realise the dangers.
And the more that have been persuaded, the more desperate its sponsor, Orkney Lib Dem MSP Liam MacArthur, has become, this week quite disgracefully telling MSPs not to “hunt for excuses” to vote down his bill.
But you don’t need to hunt for excuses because the serious problems which have persuaded just under half of us it cannot be passed go right through the proposals like Blackpool rock, with implications which cannot be undone for those “assisted” to die. Another word for it is killed.
These concerns are not “excuses” but the most serious matters of life or death and I can’t think of any issue of greater fundamental importance to have ever come before MSPs in the entire history of the devolved parliament. It is dominating this week’s proceedings, with well over 300 amendments being debated before the final vote next week.
Some of those amendments would make the legislation even more dangerous, like the proposed reduction in the punishment for coercion to one year instead of two. Just one year for persuading someone they would be better off dead? What kind of a society do the supporters of such a soft-touch measure want us to live in?
It is not such a long path to the situation where, as has happened in Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium, where assisted dying is normalised. In Canada it accounts for a staggering one in 20 deaths.
To illustrate just how desperate the bill’s supporters have become, The Dignity in Dying campaign opposed my amendment to make pregnant women ineligible, not a theoretical situation because it is estimated that one birth in a thousand is to a mother with cancer.
Apart from the very obvious fact that this could potentially lead to the loss of two lives, one of which would have no choice, campaigners argue that if accepted, my proposal would mean everyone seeking an assisted death would need to prove they were not pregnant.
They even used the ludicrous example of a doctor having to ask a 90-year-old man with prostate cancer if he was pregnant or not. Really? Any doctor who felt it necessary to ask that of any 90-year-old, male or female, should be struck off, never mind helping people to kill themselves.
The vote is going to be close and as it stands it will only take about four MSPs to change their minds for the bill to fail and I know several who will be wrestling with their consciences this weekend.
It should never have come to this and for so serious a change, a super majority of two thirds should have been required to demonstrate the settled will of parliament, but as it stands the arguments will rage on.
Victory for the bill will almost certainly mean court action, but despite Mr MacArthur’s tone, I hope there will be dignity in defeat.