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New Year Fundraising Appeal - Day 6
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Dear Pro-life Friend
Latest government figures show that 224,675 unborn children were killed in Britain by abortion in 2020
- 210,860 babies were aborted in England and Wales - the highest annual number ever recorded since the 1967 Abortion Act was introduced.
- In Scotland, meanwhile, abortion was responsible for another 13,815 unborn babies meeting a tragic end.
Back in 1967, SPUC warned that opening-up the abortion floodgates would lead to calls for euthanasia.
This was logical.
When you sanction abortion, demands for the legalised killing of the elderly, incapacitated, terminally ill and disabled inevitably follow — as these lives too are deemed by some as lives with little or no worth.
This is precisely what has happened.
And that’s why today SPUC finds itself fighting a battle on two fronts: one for the unborn, and another for people who are vulnerable and threatened by euthanasia or assisted suicide.
So, what is the difference between the euthanasia and assisted suicide?
With euthanasia, someone other than the patient – normally a doctor or nurse – takes the final steps to end a patient’s life.
With assisted suicide, the patients themselves trigger the fatal dose of drugs. The term “assisted dying” can include either practice.
Like abortion laws, a big problem with legal euthanasia or assisted suicide is that it snowballs
Proponents of assisted suicide are quick to point out that any new law would affect only a very few people enduring the worst possible suffering.
MSP Liam McArthur, for instance, proposes that his Bill in Scotland should only apply to those with a terminal illness.
They assure us that “safeguards” would prevent a slippery slope leading to deaths for all reasons and none.
But this was not the experience in the Netherlands, where “restrictive” euthanasia laws have been in place for almost two decades.
- In October 2020, the Dutch government approved plans to allow euthanasia for terminally ill children aged between one and 12.
In a remarkable about-face, Theo Boer, a prominent academic and former supporter of euthanasia in the Netherlands, has changed his mind about legalised euthanasia. Boer said:
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"For years I supported the Dutch law on assisted dying. But as we speak, I have more concerns now than ever before.
“Since 2007, the number of assisted deaths has increased 15% annually. In 2003, there were under 2,000 cases of euthanasia. By 2014, the figures were well above the 5,000 line."
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Or take Canada, where suffering from depression is now enough to qualify for legal killing.
- Alan Nichols was a school caretaker who had struggled with depression and in 2019 was admitted to hospital with dehydration. He didn’t have a terminal illness but nonetheless was euthanised in hospital by lethal injection one month later.
Or the Netherlands, again, where even a legally binding document isn’t enough to save you.
- In this case, a 75-year-old Dutch woman with dementia had stated in a legally binding advance directive that while wishing to be euthanised, she wanted to decide for herself when the time was right.
But when a doctor came to inject her, she said NO three times, and resisted.
The doctor put drugs in her coffee to partially sedate her but the woman continued to resist. Members of her family then held her down while the doctor fatally injected her regardless.
While the patient had stated that she wanted to decide “when” the time for death had come — she was not able to do so.
The termination “choice” was made by the doctor and/or family in violation of the patient’s advance directive.
A Dutch court then backed the doctor's actions.
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The claim that the “right to die” is about freedom of choice clearly does not bear too much scrutiny.
"Assisted suicide campaigners are often not to be trusted"
This is the assertion of Associate Professor of History at the University of Sunderland, Kevin Yuill.
In his July 2021 Spectator article entitled “The Disturbing Campaign to Legalise Assisted Dying”, Yuill gives us an incredibly revealing insight into our opponents’ ideological roots and thinking:
“The leading campaign group for legalising assisted dying in the UK is Dignity in Dying.
They first emerged as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society in 1936. The voluntary part was a concession designed to help assisted dying legislation through parliament, but economic concerns featured predominantly when it was debated in the 1930s.
The founding member of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society [VES], the Labour peer Lord Arthur Ponsonby, put forward the Voluntary Euthanasia Bill in 1936, arguing against the ‘mistaken notion’ that the Bill was about sparing people pain, insisting that it was really about ‘being a burden’, intended for those who’“are no longer of any use.’"
How prophetic.
Today cases are being reported where eugenic thinking is determining who should receive clinical treatment — and who should not:
- In Canada in 2020, 45-year-old Roger Foley, was denied financial support for home care for a non-terminal condition but offered euthanasia instead on three separate occasions because his life was deemed to be not worth living.
This was a blatant case of assisted dying: “Yes”; assisted living: “No.”
It was cheaper to kill Mr Foley than provide him with medical care for his long-term disability.
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The threat of assisted suicide in Britain has never been greater
- BMA Neutrality
At September’s British Medical Association (BMA) annual meeting delegates voted by 49% - 48% to drop the BMA’s opposition to assisted suicide and euthanasia laws.
This switch to a position of "neutrality" will be used by "right to die" campaigners to put pressure on politicians to change the law in the UK.
- Meacher Bill
Baroness Meacher’s Assisted Dying Bill passed unopposed following its Second Reading in the House of Lords in October. It marks the first time that an assisted suicide bill has passed to the Committee Stage in 7 years.
- Criminal behaviour ignored
Baroness Molly Meacher, the Bill’s sponsor, and chair of the UK’s largest assisted suicide campaigning group “Dignity in Dying”, revealed in October that she “broke [the] law to help [a] dying friend”.
Despite this public admission Baroness Meacher remains at large and a cross bench peer in good standing — a worrying indicator that the establishment more and more stands on the side of our opponents.
- Domino Effect
Over the past 18-months, Spain and New Zealand both passed laws legalising medically assisted killing. In November, Jersey became the first jurisdiction in the British Isles to agree in principle to making assisted suicide and euthanasia legal.
A new law is expected in Jersey in 2023, and this will be used by our opponent to press for a change in the law in other parts of the British Isles.
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The Meacher and McArthur Bills pose a very real threat to the lives of thousands of people in the UK who are vulnerable.
We have seen how supporters of the Abortion Act promised strict restrictive criteria in order to dampen down opposition concerns and get new legislation through Parliament.
But the narrative suddenly changed when the law was passed.
We quickly went from abortion only for “hard cases” to it being every woman’s “right to choose”.
Within a few short years abortion numbers in the UK had rocketed.
This deadly pattern repeats itself wherever medical killing is legalised, as we have seen in the Netherlands.
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Will you help alert our politicians before it’s too late?
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The disabled, terminally-ill and elderly — all these would be greatly harmed by permissive assisted suicide laws. A change in the law would lead to:
- less public money being invested in caring for dying patients – i.e., cutbacks in palliative care services and hospice funding
- patients being pressurised into requesting their own death
- and the “right to die” could quickly become “a duty to die”
Protecting the frail and vulnerable starts with dismantling the false notions routinely peppering “assisted dying” propaganda in the UK.
Will you consider donating £10, £25 or £50 today to fund SPUC’s fight against assisted suicide and euthanasia in 2022?
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It’s crucial that we get strong persuasive facts - like the ones published by Professor Boer above, and more like them - into the hands of journalists, politicians and schools before it’s too late.
Your involvement makes it possible to resist. We cannot do it without you.
Yours sincerely,
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John Deighan
Chief Executive Officer
PS - As Professor Boer’s revealing research bears out, when an activity is legalised, more people will avail themselves of it.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide laws are no exception.
From 2002 - the year the Netherlands’ euthanasia law came into effect - to 2016, euthanasia deaths as a percentage of total Dutch deaths tripled from 1.3% to 4.08%.
The Abortion Act opened the abortion floodgates in the UK. Unless we take action immediately there is a real danger that the McArthur Bill could do the same with legalised medical killing.
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