A new bill in the United Kingdom would legalize assisted dying because I guess we’re not learning from Canada.
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater says that her bill has strict safeguard measures to prevent it from being abused and that fewer than 1,000 people per year would use it. It would require two doctors to sign off on a death proposal plus a high court judge. She says that it is strictly for “terminally ill people who’ve got less than 6 months to live.”
The bill does not prevent doctors from suggesting assisted dying to patients, which is something that is reportedly happening at astonishing rates in Canada. Recent reports show that the practice is being “abused” in Canada and disproportionately offered to people on lower incomes for conditions as common as hearing loss.
Leadbeater says that there is “no legal risk of [the bill’s] scope being widened by the courts on human rights grounds, because of the strictly limited definitions in the bill and the failure of previous challenges in British and European courts.”
Only that is what Canadians were promised when MAID was put into place too and now the high courts are considering legislation to expand assisted dying options to minors and people with mental illness.
