New UK bill aims to legalise assisted dying for people who are terminally ill

A small demonstration by people advocating assisted dying was held outside the Houses of Parliament on October 16, 2024, as a bill to legalise assisted dying is to be put before lawmakers in London
| Photo Credit: AP

A new bill aiming to legalise assisted dying in Britain is to be introduced in Parliament on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, marking the first time in nearly a decade that the House of Commons will debate allowing doctors to help end people’s lives after previous court challenges to change a legal blanket ban failed.

Labour politician Kim Leadbeater will introduce a bill granting terminally ill people in England and Wales a way to allow physicians to help them die, although the details won’t be released until later in the month ahead of a Parliamentary vote.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised that lawmakers will have a “free vote,” meaning they will not be obliged to vote along party lines. Starmer supported a 2015 assisted dying bill and has said “there are grounds for changing the law.”

“There is absolutely no question of disabled people or those with mental illness who are not terminally ill being pressured to end their lives,” Leadbeater said in a statement. She said it is “important that we get the legislation right, with the necessary protections and safeguards in place.”

Leadbeater’s bill is likely to be similar to an assisted dying bill introduced in the House of Lords earlier this year that has only made slow progress.

The unelected House of Lords studies and amends legislation passed by the elected House of Commons. While bills can originate in the Lords, they rarely become law.

The bill introduced in the House of Lords restricts assisted dying to adults with six or fewer months to live and requires permission from the High Court after having a declaration signed by two doctors, among other criteria.

Esther Rantzen, the founder of a British children’s charity who has advanced lung cancer, encouraged people to write to their local member of Parliament, saying “all we are asking for is the right to choose.” Rantzen said in the absence of a legal way to end her life in Britain, she plans to travel to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal for foreigners.

Opponents of assisted dying, however, say there is no way to change the law without endangering vulnerable people, according to actress Liz Carr, a disability rights campaigner.

Assisted suicide — where patients take a lethal drink prescribed by a doctor — is legal in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and parts of the U.S., with regulations on qualifying criteria varying by jurisdiction.

Naomi Richards, an anthropologist who specializes in death and dying at the University of Glasgow, said the number of people who might make use of assisted dying, if legalized in Britain, would be fairly limited, unless the public pushed for wider access.

“These are questions that in a democracy will only be answered further down the road,” she said.

Trudo Lemmens, a professor of health law and policy at the University of Toronto, said Britain’s first priority should be to address inequities in health care across the U.K.

“What we’ve seen is that people ask for medical assistance in dying because they feel they’re a burden to others,” Lemmens said, referring to Canada after it legalized assisted dying in 2016.

“Pressure inevitably increases to expand it beyond what is legislated,” Lemmens said. “Countries should be extremely careful on this and deeply study what has happened in other jurisdictions before they allow end-of-life termination by physicians.”