September 14, 2024
By Lucy Ashton
The first “citizens’ jury” on assisted dying in England has backed a change in the law to allow people who are terminally ill to end their life.
However, campaigners against assisted dying have questioned the validity of the exercise, as a majority of those recruited to the “jury” were already in favour of changing the law.
The jury of 28 people concluded assisted dying should be an option for those judged to have capacity to make their own decisions.
While it has no legal powers, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which set up the jury, said it represented a crucial new piece of evidence in the debate as it allowed the public to consider the issues more deeply than they could in surveys.
But Dr Gordon Macdonald, of the Care Not Killing campaign group, said: “A jury in a court of law must be rigorously impartial with no strong views about the case they are judging.
“So, what could have been a serious contribution to this important debate seemingly fails the impartiality test.”
Nuffield Council on Bioethics director Danielle Hamm said that in a “highly complex, sensitive and ethically charged” debate such as assisted dying, a citizens’ jury allowed more in-depth consideration to be given to the issue, as well as exploring the reasons for people forming their views.
The council claimed it had set up the jury because of the growing interest in the issue just as there has been in abortion.
According to recent discussions in the Holyrood parliament most MSPs appear to consider this to be an issue they would rather avoid given that Catholics and other Christian organisations have expressed strong views on the matter.
The Scottish Parliament had only one dissenter to a motion to ban “buffer zones” to stop people praying silently outside hospitals and clinics where terminations were carried out.
It’s much the same in the United States where Pope Francis has suggested that the electorate should vote in support of Democrat Kamala Harris who is standing against Donald Trump.
The Pope has described voting for Harris as “the lesser of two evils” given that both candidates have expressed support for aborton.
Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer supports a change in the law in England and has committed to holding a vote on it.
A bill proposing changing the law in Scotland is due to be debated in the autumn. Politicians in Jersey and the Isle of Man have already backed plans to introduce assisted dying.
The “citizens’ jury” supported both physician-assisted suicide, where the health professional prescribes lethal drugs for eligible patients to take themselves, and voluntary euthanasia, where a health professional administers the drugs to the patient.
The most common reasons given for backing a change were said to be to stop people living in pain at the end of their lives, giving people the knowledge they can die with dignity, and the importance of allowing people options and choice.
However, concerns have been expressed that a new right to assisted dying could lead to it being misused if the right safeguarding was not put in place and could lead to a loss of funding for end-of-life care.
The Democrat published a report yesterday which said Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney had given asssurances to Labour MSP Carol Mochan that Government support for hospices such as the St Margaret of Scotland Hospice in Clydebank would continue to receive financial support.
Assisted dying is already allowed in some US states, Australia and parts of Europe.
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