British Parliament to vote on legalization of assisted suicide in fall

From The Daily Mail in the UK:

A senior Labour backbencher plans to put forward a Commons bill to legalise assisted dying.

The move means the right to die debate is set to dominate Parliament this autumn.

The news came a day after multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy (pictured) won a court battle to have the law on assisted suicide clarified. She wants to know if her husband, Omar Puente, would be prosecuted if he helped her commit suicide overseas.

The Law Lords ruled that the Director of Public Prosecutions must define exactly when he would take action against those who help friends and relatives go to places such as the Swiss Dignitas clinic.

Now David Winnick, Labour MP for Walsall North, hopes to introduce 'a measure whereby assisted dying could take place in this country'.

He said: 'The question arises from yesterday's decision - should we recognise cases such as Debbie Purdy, should we change the law, should people have to go abroad?' Mr Winnick said he was firmly against the process being used to put pressure on the disabled and said there would have to be safeguards to ensure it was used properly.

He said he also supported the work of hospices to provide palliative care to the terminally ill.

Mr Winnick insisted: 'The right to life is absolutely essential. I'm not saying for a moment 'let's try and encourage people to die'.

'But if a person with a terminal illness does reach such a conclusion, that they don't want to go on and they want assisted dying, such a facility should exist.


'If the law was changed we would need to have absolute safeguards against abuse.

'We would have to give the person who has made such a decision every opportunity to change their minds and to make it clear it would be limited to those suffering from terminal illness.'

The measure will be debated only if Mr Winnick wins a ballot against other MPs wanting to put bills forward.

Even if he gets that far, his bill would be likely to succeed only if it won Government support - because it is ministers who decide how much Parliamentary time is set aside to debate legislation.

Polls regularly show that around 80 per cent of the population back giving people the right to assisted suicide.

But fellow Labour MP Brian Iddon, chairman of the Care Not Killing Alliance, said: 'It would be a dark day if this bill were passed.

'I don't think the care of the elderly and the chronically sick would be as good if voluntary euthanasia were available.

'It would put great pressure on the very elderly, the very sick, the terminally ill and the seriously disabled - making them feel a burden on relatives.'

The debate on assisted suicide has been raging for years. Debbie Purdy's case has been compared to that of Diane Pretty, who brought the issue to widespread attention in 2002 when she launched a legal bid for her husband to be allowed to help her take her life without fear of prosecution.

Ms Pretty died of motor neurone disease at a hospice in May that year near her home in Luton, Bedfordshire, shortly after losing her case in the European Court of Human Rights.

Her lawyers had argued that under the convention, which guarantees the right to respect for private life and bans inhuman and degrading treatment, she should be allowed to die with dignity, rather than face the distressing final stages of her disease.

In 2006 an Assisted Dying Bill, brought by retired human rights lawyer Joel Joffe, was rejected in the House of Lords.

His bid was followed by a legal challenge last year by Ms Purdy to clarify the law on assisted suicide.

But in February this year Ms Purdy lost her bid to force the Director of Public Prosecutions to issue specific policy guidelines.

Suicide is no longer a crime in England and Wales, but aiding and abetting suicide is a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

The calls for a change in the law have been marked by high-profile legal bids and a steady stream of publicity about UK citizens who have travelled to Dignitas to die.

Dignitas was founded in 1998 by Swiss lawyer Ludwig Minelli and takes advantage of the country's liberal laws on assisted suicide which suggest that a person can be prosecuted only if they are acting out of self interest.

Although a handful of people have been arrested, no relative or friend of the more than 100 UK citizens who have gone abroad to Dignitas clinics has been prosecuted under the 1961 Suicide Act.

More than 100 UK citizens have so far gone abroad to die in Dignitas clinics where nearly 800 people from the UK have become members - the first step for those considering assisted suicide.

These families include that of renowned conductor Sir Edward Downes, 85, and his 74-year-old wife Lady Joan Downes, who died together at Dignitas earlier this month.

Other cases include that of 66-year-old Dr Anne Turner, from Combe Down, Bath, who took her life with the help of doctors at the Dignitas clinic in 2006.

She had been suffering from progressive supranuclear palsy, an incurable brain disease and died surrounded by her three children after drinking a lethal dose of barbiturates.

Reg Crew, 74, from Liverpool, a motor neurone disease sufferer, travelled to Dignitas to die in 2003 accompanied by his wife, and Robert and Jennifer Stokes, of Leighton Buzzard, Beds, died at Dignitas in 2003.

An inquest into their death in 2004 heard they had both suffered a range of mental and physical illness over a 30-year period but were not terminally ill.

Alayne Buckley, 61, of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, who had motor neurone disease, died at Dignitas in 2005 accompanied by her husband Derek, and Valere Sliwinski, 58, of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, who had cancer and multiple sclerosis, died at the clinic in 2006.

In 2006 Maureen Messent, 67, was arrested and questioned over claims she killed her terminally ill aunt with a morphine overdose in Devon in the 1960s. She was later cleared of any wrongdoing.

Also that year, Stefan Sliwinski, 34, took his mother Valere Sliwinski, 58, of Clacton, Essex, who was suffering from cancer and multiple sclerosis (MS), to Zurich's Dignitas centre where she died after taking a drugs overdose. Mr Sliwinski was arrested and questioned but no further action taken.

In February last year at Lewes Crown Court, Robert Cook admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and aiding and abetting the suicide of his wife, Vanessa, 55, who was suffering from MS. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years.

The Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC said last year that there was no public interest in prosecuting the parents of paralysed former rugby player Daniel James, 23, who died at a Swiss clinic in September last year.

His parents, Julie and Mark James, from Sinton Green, Worcester, said the former England under-16 rugby player was determined to die because he had never come to terms with his extreme physical incapacity.

Earlier this month, medics attending the British Medical Association's annual conference in Liverpool voted overwhelmingly against supporting a motion 'allowing the choice of an assisted death by patients who are terminally ill and who have mental capacity'.

They also refused to back calls to lift the threat of prosecution from friends and relatives who accompany loved ones abroad to die.

Assisted suicide is legal in Belgium, Netherlands, Oregon (by the Oregon Death with Dignity Act) and Switzerland.