Legislation is not the answer for assisted suicide
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The Government won’t consider bringing forward legislation to make assisted suicide legal. This isn’t because of morality, religion or even because of a lack of compassion for the terminally ill. The reason is simple: you can’t legislate for assisted suicide or euthanasia satisfactorily enough for murder not to go unpunished.
Those who support the idea of legislating in favour of assisted suicide will always give you the philosophical argument that it is our choice when to end our own lives and it should be a choice to be able to die with dignity.
They also tend to trash the religious argument that life is a precious gift from God.
I have no real problem with either of these arguments, but they do not take into account reality. And that is where the law steps in.
The existing law on assisting someone to kill themselves is described in the Suicide Act 1961 as ‘a person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or attempt by another to commit suicide’. It makes...
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