Public Policy Researcher Carys Moseley examines the dangerous slippery-slope of legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada
On Wednesday 16 October, Kim Leadbeater MP for Spen Valley tabled a private member’s bill in Parliament to legalise assisted suicide.
The second reading will take place on Friday 29 November. The Prime Minister has said that he is pleased the subject will be debated, as he promised Esther Rantzen that he would make time for it in parliament. The outgoing Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, has ordered government ministers to be neutral about the bill.
The government is therefore passively allowing for the legalisation of assisted suicide to become a reality. This stance of supposed neutrality towards assisted suicide is what led Canada down the slippery slope on the issue.
38 Labour MPs campaign to extend bill to include ‘incurable suffering’
Kim Leadbeater claims that legalisation of assisted suicide in other jurisdictions has not led to a slippery slope of medical abuse of patients. She should look closer to home.
No less than 38 of her fellow Labour MPs are campaigning to extend the scope of her bill from applying to the terminally ill to applying to those ‘incurably suffering’. By insisting on a broad debate on the subject, she herself is helping make the slippery slope more likely.
Prime Minister will not oppose the bill
Prime Minister Keir Starmer is known to support legalising assisted suicide as he backed a bill to legalise it in 2015. He will not oppose the bill’s passage through Parliament – in fact, he has been working to fast-track its progress.
Starmer’s open support for a change in the law is believed to be pressuring new Labour MPs into supporting the bill. New Labour MPs will not want to appear to be on the other side to the Prime Minister on this issue.
Lord Alli supports legalising assisted suicide
Lord Alli, the Labour peer who has donated so much money to the Prime Minister for clothes, shoes and reading glasses, supports legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide. Lord Alli has also been very generous with money to the Labour Party for many years. There is speculation that Lord Alli has influenced Sir Kier’s position on assisted dying.
The thousands of pounds that Lord Alli has spent on the Prime Minister and the Labour Party could have been better spent donated to medical research into illnesses currently deemed terminal.
Canada – the campaign to redefine rights and freedoms
The worst example of a country where the slippery slope has taken effect is Canada.
To begin with, pro-euthanasia activists campaigned for years by bringing court cases to try to chip away at the law protecting life. The most prominent activist was Sue Rodriguez. She was a mother diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (‘Lou Gehrig’s disease’) in 1992. By 1993, she was told she had one year to live and started a campaign to overturn Canada’s prohibition on assisted suicide, arguing that it was unconstitutional.
Rodriguez’ lawyers argued in court that this prohibition, enshrined in the Canadian Criminal Code, violated key sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – namely section 7 on the Right to life, liberty and security of the person, section 12 on Protection against cruel and unusual treatment or punishment, and section 15 (guarantee of equal rights).
Rodriguez’ case failed before the Supreme Court of British Columbia. However, the arguments used were crucial to subsequently obtaining a change in the law. The method was to redefine fundamental rights and freedoms, thus aiming to chip away at the frameworks of Canadian law and the Christian philosophy protecting the sanctity of life that lay at the foundations of the country.
The danger of doctors being allowed a neutral stance
Euthanasia and assisted suicide campaigners in Canada continued their campaigning to change the meaning of key concepts, and thereby change the culture that fed the legal system and the public debate. This cultural change led to doctors gradually becoming less opposed to the idea.
By 2011, the Canadian Medical Association found that 11% of its members supported a change in the law. More polling in 2014 found this figure had risen to 26%. In 2015 the CMA changed its official stance from opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide to allowing doctors to follow their conscience.
This runs parallel to the British Medical Association moving to ‘neutrality’ on assisted suicide in 2021.
Ambiguous wording of ‘limitation’ on euthanasia and assisted suicide
Strategic litigation continued and in the case of Carter v Canada, the prohibition on assisted suicide was successfully overturned on the grounds of its undermining Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Canadian government moved to decriminalise both euthanasia (doctors killing patients) and assisted suicide (doctors providing drugs for patients to commit suicide), drafting a law in 2016 to comply with the Supreme Court of Canada’s judgment.
Decriminalisation was presented as a neutral government policy that exhibited compassion towards those committing euthanasia and assisting suicide by ending punishment for these acts, and permitting individual patients to choose them within a legal framework.
Yet, from then until 2022, there were 44,958 recorded medically assisted deaths. No doubt this is due to the shockingly vague definition of physician-assisted death given by the court:
“physician-assisted death [is] for a competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination of life and (2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition.”
Under this definition, a patient does not even need to have been diagnosed with a terminal illness to qualify for assisted suicide. Any disability whatever would qualify you for assisted suicide. How ‘intolerable’ the suffering is, is left to the patient to decide and is therefore entirely subjective.
Canada dropped initial safeguards for euthanasia and assisted suicide
Canada originally introduced ‘safeguards’ for all medical practitioners who might be called upon to administer Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). These included the following five principles: “have two independent medical assessments, make a written request signed by an independent witness, know that you can withdraw your request at any time, provide final consent before receiving medical assistance in dying, give advance consent, if applicable.”
However in 2021, the Canadian government widened the scope for permission to request MAiD from terminal illness to having a serious disease or disability that is not terminal. This was due to a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. Within six years of the Carter v Canada court case, Canada had fallen down the slippery slope.
Why Canadians choose euthanasia or assisted suicide
The Canadian government publishes evidence for why people choose MAiD. Chart 4.3 in the latest government report shows the reasons given for the year 2022. Over a third (35.3%) of people gave as their reason, ‘perceived burden on family, friends or caregivers’. Similarly, 30.2% cited ‘loss of control over bodily functions’. A majority (59.2%) cited ‘inadequate control of pain (or concern)’.
Nearly one in five (17.1%) cited ‘isolation or loneliness’. The most common reasons given were ‘loss of ability to engage in meaningful activities’ (86.3%) and ‘loss of ability to perform activities of daily living’ (81.9%).
These are very vague statements that point to ill and disabled people’s need to be cared for, not to a false ‘need’ to be killed. They certainly also show a loss of morale in society which has been caused by years of pro-euthanasia/assisted suicide activism.
Even euthanising doctors say cases are ‘morally distressing’
This week, an Associated Press investigation has shown that even doctors in Canada who are involved in euthanasia have expressed “deep discomfort with ending the lives of vulnerable people whose deaths were avoidable”. They called these cases “morally distressing” and say that legal protections are too vague to be effective.
But it is too late. Pandora’s box is open, and Canada lives – or dies – with the consequences.
Canada’s history serves as a warning to the UK
Canada is not the only country or jurisdiction to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide. However, Canada specifically is a crucial case study for us because it is legally, socially, and culturally very similar to the United Kingdom. As both the UK and Canada are in the Commonwealth, politicians here look at countries such as Canada for examples of new laws they would like to imitate here.
All the factors that enabled legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada, and the ensuing slippery slope, can be found here in the UK. These include: the long-term campaign to redefine fundamental rights and freedoms through the courts; the campaign to change legal culture and social attitudes; the increasing capitulation of doctors; the loss of moral leadership in key medical organisations; the increasing number of judges acting as activists beyond their remit; and key politicians ditching their responsibility to protect the most vulnerable in our society.
Crisis moment for the United Kingdom
We only have limited time to learn from the serious errors made in Canada and to halt the move to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide here in the UK.
What is desperately needed is activism on all fronts and a strong Christian witness that holds the sanctity of life at its core.
This week, the i-paper published results of its survey of MPs which found that the majority of them (54%) support legalisation of assisted suicide. Only 35% were opposed, with the remaining 11% unsure.
Members of the Cabinet are split over the issue, and Wes Streeting, the Health and Social Care Secretary, remains undecided. Once again we must emphasise that the Prime Minister himself, Sir Keir Starmer, favours changing the law.
This is an alarming sea-change in Parliament, as far as MPs attitudes are concerned. The most recent polling shows that politicians are out of step with the public, as less than half of voters want their MP to support legalisation.
This mismatch between our politicians’ ideologies and the public’s concerns reminds us that our call for Christians to speak up is not just another Action Alert. Politicians must be made aware of the concerns and convictions of the constituents they represent.
If we are to protect the most vulnerable in our society and preserve the sanctity of life, Christians must write to their MPs and speak to them face-to-face before Parliament opens the door to the irreversible damage that will be done by legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide.
