It was difficult to read the reaction of Conservative MP Kit Malthouse to the news that yet another “assisted dying” Bill will be introduced into Parliament without thinking of <em>Brighton Rock</em>, the classic novel by Graham Greene.
Malthouse, the MP for North West Hampshire, assured voters on X that he stood foursquare behind the obsequious Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP for Spen Valley,<mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"> <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/03/labour-mp-paves-way-for-assisted-dying-vote/">who next week will bring forward a Private Member’s Bill at the wishes of Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister.</a> </mark>The law that presently forbids doctors to kill their patients, Malthouse pontificated, “must change in the name of love” and suddenly, there in my mind was Pinkie Brown handing a loaded revolver to Rose - grooming, reassuring and misleading, always intent on death.
Misinformation is par for the course when it comes to empowering doctors to kill their patents. Even “assisted dying”, the euphemism <em>du jour</em> for assisted suicide or euthanasia, covers up and sanitises a horrible truth.
Occasionally the truth comes out, however. One such moment arrived on Sunday when it emerged that 54 MPs are conspiring to demand a Bill far broader in its eligibility criteria for doctor-assisted death than anything Parliament has ever seen.
Campaigners for “assisted dying” have hitherto sought to push the door open by a few inches by presenting Bills with a <em>soupçon</em> of medical killing in the hope it wouldn’t scare off too many waverers.
Not this lot. Emboldened by Sir Keir’s slavering rush to “assisted dying”, this cohort sees the time as sufficiently ripe to demand far more than the usual promise of “safeguards”. Why start at the top of the slippery slope when it is possible to get much nearer to the foot of the precipice straight from the off?
They surfaced because they did not wish to be constrained by Ms Leadbeater’s better intentions. Though doing Starmer’s dirty work, she has indicated that she wishes to limit the scope of the legislation to terminally ill patients who are suffering unbearably, and hinting that she might call her Bill “Choice at the End of Life”.
The words “end of life” is a problem to the euthanasia death cult and with the title of the Bill and its contents at the time still up for grabs, they were demanding “suffering incurably” as the general criteria for eligibility.
“Some people who do not have a prognosis of six months or less will be suffering in a way that no matter what you do, no matter the care you receive, their suffering becomes intolerable,” <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/10/05/widen-access-to-assisted-dying-say-labour-mps/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">explained Lizzi Collinge, one of 38 Labour MPs in the group, 13 of whom hold government positions, to <em>The Sunday Telegraph.</em> “That, I think, needs to be reflected in the law.”</mark></a>
What could possibly go wrong? To the likes of Ms Leadbeater, the answer would probably be “nothing”. She is like one of Lenin’s useful idiots, stuffing her head in the sand ostrich-like as she brushes aside the vast amounts of documented evidence to show how “assisted dying”, wherever it becomes law, wrecks palliative care and puts sick, vulnerable and elderly people under pressure to kill themselves.
“It will not undermine calls for improvements to palliative care,” she said in complete ignorance or denial of the horror stories pumping out of Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands on an almost daily basis.
“Nor will it conflict with the rights of people with disabilities to be treated equally and have the respect and support they are absolutely right to campaign for in order to live fulfilling lives. I support these causes just as passionately.
“The Health and Social Care Select Committee report earlier this year found that where legislation similar to mine has been introduced elsewhere around the world it has been accompanied by improved palliative care provision and has not impacted negatively on the lives of disabled people.”
<mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><a href="https://www.bioethics.org.uk/news-events/news-from-the-centre/press-release-anscombe-bioethics-centre-reaction-to-the-house-of-commons-select-committee-report-on-assisted-dying-assisted-suicide/">Naturally, she fails to mention this report criticised at the time as the “inaccurate” product of a stacked inquiry,</a> </mark>with conclusions so contrary to the truth that it smacked of an establishment stitch-up, one probably instigated to sway the arguments against the facts with precisely this moment in mind.
Yet one only has to look across the North Sea to see what “assisted dying” for “unbearable suffering” means in practice, where a story was breaking at the same time as the venal Sir Keir was gloating about how he was delivering his promise of a Bill to Dame Esther Rantzen, blind to the fact that putting celebrity whims over public safety makes him look as bourgeois as anyone who ever tugged a forelock to an aristocrat.
It involves an escalating row over the killing by lethal injection of Milou Verhoof, <a href="https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/10/psychiatrists-rebuked-for-criticising-euthanasia-of-17-year-old/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">a 17-year-old girl who developed borderline personality disorder and long-term clinical depression after she was sexually abused on two occasions.</mark></a>
She claimed she was suffering incurably and in October last year <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/08/dutch-euthanasia-healthy-children/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">was given a lethal injection by Menno Oosterhoff, a psychiatrist who had previously killed nine of his patients, including a child of 16.</mark></a>
Fourteen other psychiatrists urged the police to investigate and the KNMG, the Dutch equivalent of the British Medical Association, joined Milou’s parents in intervening on behalf of the killer.
Don’t expect a prosecution. The law is already in his favour, thanks to the difficulty in defining the concept of unbearable suffering.
A new book called <mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><a href="https://amzn.eu/d/eMbx5IJ"><em>The Reality of Assisted Dying: Understanding the Issues</em>,</a> </mark>edited by Baroness Illora Finlay, a professor of palliative medicine, and Julian Hughes, a professor of geriatrics, explains that the Dutch Euthanasia Code Practice acknowledges that such suffering is “a subjective notion”.
It says that what is “bearable for one patient may not be bearable for another”, opening the door for euthanasia for just about anything. Most significantly, the definition of unbearable suffering is legally in the hands of the doctors doing the killing
This was clarified in the notorious “coffee euthanasia” case of 2016. An elderly woman who had previously expressed a wish for a lethal injection and who developed dementia and could no longer give her free consent. Her family went to visit the woman at her nursing home on the pretext of sharing a coffee followed by a shopping trip. Sedatives were dropped into the woman’s coffee but did not work as well as planned, so family members held her down while a doctor gave her a lethal jab.
The response of the medical profession to the predictable outcry at this horror was to change the rules to make advance directives binding on dementia patients, to allow the administration of sedatives when the patient resists – and to emphasise that it is solely the treating doctors who have the power to decide if the patient is suffering unbearably. With a law like that in the UK, Dr Harold Shipman would still be free.
The euthanasia enthusiasts in Parliament would appear to be contemplating a law that is even worse than that as “incurable suffering” is an even more nebulous concept that “unbearable suffering”. It is a catch-all term that could sweep up anyone who is disabled or has long-term intractable health problems. Why not myopia? Athlete’s foot?
It would be naïve in the extreme to pretend that ‘assisted dying’ in the UK will not follow a trajectory similar to the Netherlands. There is no right way of doing euthanasia. If Ms Leadbeater’s Bill appears sufficiently restrained, it will soon be amended by Malthusian pro-death zealots who have seats in Parliament. The only safeguard that works is total prohibition.
The first duty of any government is to protect its citizens. By visiting such an evil on this country, Starmer would fail to discharge the duties of his office in a spectacularly egregious way. Anyone who really cares about “love” would surely do everything in their power to give this monstrous Bill a dose of its own medicine.
It isn’t about love. It’s about not punishing doctors who murder teenage victims of child abuse because they’re depressed.
<em>(<a href="https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/">Article reproduced courtesy of <mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">TCW: Defending Freedom</mark></a>/ Photo by Simon Caldwell)</em>
