The UK is once again venturing into the euthanasia wars by suggesting the establishment of “suicide courts” where a judge’s permission would be required before any doctor could administer a lethal prescription as a way of quelling opponents who criticize the ineffective safeguards typically found in these laws.
According to The Independent, the first Parliamentary vote on the Assisted Dying Bill was approved by the House of Lords this week, a bill which now contains an amendment requiring a judge to determine if the assisted suicide should go forward. The law allows a person who has less than six months to live to request a lethal dose of drugs prescribed on the authority of two doctors, but the amendment takes it a step further.
“Lord Pannick said his amendments wound mean terminally ill patients would have to wait for the authority of a judge before they could receive the lethal drugs,” the Independent reports.
“He said the measure would provide safeguards to prevent patients being unduly pressured into assisted death, and that judges are already used to ruling on cases that mean the death or survival of patients.”
Judges would be permitted to request the opinion of other doctors or psychiatrists if he or she is not satisfied that the patient has the full capacity to make such a critical decision, or to determine if the patient is being pressured in some way to end their life.
Bioethics attorney Wesley J. Smith describes this tactic as a kind of death panel on steroids.
“With legalization [of assisted suicide], you have private transactions between doctors and suicidal patients. It’s wrong, but the government isn’t officially or directly involved in the death,” Smith explains.
“But a suicide court would make the government a direct participant in suicide. The State would be ruling that some lives are not worth living. It would give an explicit imprimatur to suicide. That’s a huge and dangerous step that should never be taken.”
As Smith says, guidelines such as these don’t protect, they just give people the illusion of control.
The new bill is currently in the Committee State which will give the full House an opportunity to debate the law clause by clause.
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