MPs to defy courts over rulings on euthanasia

By Simon Caldwell
A GROUP of more than 25 MPs are threatening to go to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge a landmark decision on euthanasia.
The group, which includes MPs from all parties, is taking "counsel's opinion" over the ruling made only two weeks ago by the High Court Family Division to allow two patients in vegetative-state to be starved and dehydrated to death under the Human Rights Act, a new law which makes the state protect a person's right to life. In a joint statement, the group stressed that the British courts were "not the end of the line" and indicated that an appeal to Europe remained a real possibility.
The group also sharply criticised the British Medical Association for its guidelines issued last year in support of doctors who killed their patients.
The statement said: "Quite apart front a political campaign to allow doctors to end the lives of patients who are not dying, we have people who are trying to change the law through case law — that is, through court cases — and we have written to interested people
throughout our constituencies lo alert them to policies being pursued by the BMA.
"Unfortunately, this is the body most likely to be consulted by the courts as well as by politicians and political leaders.
"If the BMA guidelines were to be followed, patients would not even have the minimal protection of doctors being required to obtain court approval. Put crudely, these guidelines call for doctors to be allowed to cause death."
The letter urges people to become actively involved in the campaign to tighten up the law and will be circulated throughout constituencies, churches, synagogues and mosques.
Behind the move is Ann Winterton, the Conservative MP for Congleton who in February was unsuccessful in her attempt to introduce a Private Member's Bill to reverse the Bland Judgement of 1993, the decision which first allowed euthanasia by omission in Britain.