Assisted suicide could soon become legal in the UK. All the signs indicate that there will be another piece of legislation before MPs later in the year.
Since 2003, there have been more than ten serious legislative attempts at Westminster to change the law on this issue, but each one has failed. The most recent was September 2015, where MPs rejected the Assisted Dying Bill by 330–118. Given how much the House of Commons has changed since the last vote, the outcome of this next challenge is far from certain.
Having failed in the courts, the pro-assisted suicide lobby has switched its attention to the medical bodies. They know that a key argument employed in 2015 to persuade MPs to vote against the Assisted Dying Bill was the fact that all major medical bodies were opposed to changing the law to allow assisted suicide. But now the cracks in that stronghold have begun to appear.
Is assisted suicide really that bad?
Part of my role at Christians Action, Research and Education (CARE) involves travelling and speaking at different churches and conferences …