Church condemns assisted suicide bill in Scotland
By Ed West

29 January 2010

Margo MacDonald answers questions on the End of Life Choices Bill, at the Scottish Parliament (PA)

The Church has condemned a bill in the Scottish Parliament seeking to legalise assisted suicide, and promise to challenge it in court.

The End of Life Assistance Bill was published in the Scottish Parliament last week after months of consultation. The bill was introduced by veteran politician Margo MacDonald, who suffers from Parkinson's and wants to legalise suicide clinics in Scotland. The bill would allow people over the age of 16 to legally end their lives.

But a spokesman for the Church in Scotland said the legislation "would cross a moral boundary that no society should ever breach", adding: "It would completely invert and threaten the relationship between patient and doctor and undermine the role of medicine in society."

The Church argued that the Human Rights Act would override the ability of MSPs to pass the bill, raising the possibility of a legal challenge.

A spokesman said:_"Ultimately, it is questionable whether the Scottish Parliament even has the power to legislate in this area. The European Convention on Human Rights recognises the right to life as inalienable that is, it cannot be removed by any authority or relinquished by any person."

However, the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Government, Alex Fergusson, has passed the bill as fit for legislation. Miss MacDonald, the independent MSP for Lothians, said: "The Church may want to challenge this in the courts, but what about the abortion law? That would seem to undermine their claim."

"It's absolutely appalling that people should have to leave their homes and their families and friends and everything that's familiar to them, and end their life in a foreign country in what has to be a relatively clinical atmosphere.

"Dying is part of living it's the last act of your life and if we accept the responsibility of how we live our lives, then I really fail to see where there is any demarcation of how we should die," she said. "This bill is meant to try and redress that unfairness, to give those people the autonomy to exercise some control over how they die, to give them the legal right to seek assistance and to protect the people that give assistance."

The law would apply only to those with severe degenerative disorders or terminal diseases, and those whose lives had become unbearable through a severe, disabling accident. It would not apply to those with dementia, or to anyone unable to make a decision for themselves.

Meanwhile in England a judge threw out an attempted murder case against a mother who had assisted her daughter's suicide after 17 years of caring for her. Kay Gilderdale was cleared by a jury within less than two hours after being on remand for over a year. She admitted to helping her 31-year-old daughter Lynn kill herself with a morphine overdose after trying to dissuade her from suicide for about an hour. Her daughter had suffered from the chronic fatigue illness ME since the age of 14.

The decision to try Mrs Gilderdale was roundly condemned in the media, especially as two judges had last year questioned whether it was in the public interest to prosecute her for attempted murder.

Last week a judge jailed a mother for nine years who had killed her severly brain-damaged son, despite Frances Inglis's plea that she had killed 22-year-old Tom out of love.

Judge Brian Barker at the Old Bailey said: "You cannot take the law into your own hands and you cannot take away life, however compelling you think the reason." Meanwhile, controversial novelist Martin Amis told the Sunday Times that euthanasia should be legalised and people should be able to kill themselves in suicide booths on street corners, where old people could end their lives "with a Martini and a medal".

Mr Amis later denied that he had been joking. "I mean it quite seriously," he said. "Of course, [the idea of euthanasia booths on every street corner] is utopian - it'll never happen, or not for a very long time."

But, he added, "when you're 70, you don't feel like walking under a bus - you want something easier than that." His generation would soon be seen as a burden to society.

"Hideous oldsters like me will be stinking up the clinics and the restaurants," he said.

"To be human is to have a certain amount of dignity, and I don't see that dignity in the demented. It's unworthy of a human being to have to go through that. The choice to die is a noble privilege we should all have."