• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / News Archive / Campbell’s speech helps defeat assisted suicide bid

Campbell’s speech helps defeat assisted suicide bid

By guest on 23rd July 2009 Category: News Archive

Listen

Four disabled peers have helped to defeat a move to weaken the laws on assisted suicide.
Lord Falconer, the former Labour Lord Chancellor, had tabled an amendment to the coroners and justice bill that would have legalised helping a terminally-ill person to travel to another country where assisted suicide is legal.
Lord Falconer said 115 people have travelled from the UK to the Swiss Dignitas clinic for an assisted suicide, but none of the cases had resulted in the prosecution of anyone helping them, leading to a “legal no-man’s land”.
His amendment was defeated by 194 votes to 141.
The disabled peer Baroness [Jane] Campbell told fellow peers that if the amendment became law “we turn the traffic lights from red to green on state-sanctioned assisted dying, albeit in another country”.
She said legalising assisted suicide in the US state of Oregon had “heightened the fear of disabled and terminally-ill people in America” rather than reducing it.
And she said the amendment “would place a new and invidious pressure” on disabled and terminally-ill people nearing the end of their lives. “Some will consider death as preferable to fighting for support to live with dignity.”
Three other disabled peers – Baroness Chapman, Baroness Masham and Baroness Wilkins – also voted against the amendment.
But the disabled peer Lord [Colin] Low supported the amendment, and said: “There is no way in which this amendment gives the slightest encouragement to anyone thinking of coercing the generality of disabled people into going abroad for an assisted death.
“It is a major act to go abroad in order to die with dignity. It is implausible to suggest that people can easily be conned into doing it.”
The debate came as a string of prominent disability rights activists signed an open letter attacking the amendment.
They included Lady Campbell, Liz Sayce, Julie Newman, David Morris, Mike Smith, Tara Flood, Rachel Hurst, Alice Maynard, Professor Colin Barnes and Dr Ju Gosling.
The letter said: “We know what is acceptable as disease or disability progresses, and for the huge number of us who say no to assisted suicide, it is because we fear the changing culture such an amendment would bring.
“We are scared now; we will be terrified if assisted suicide becomes state-sanctioned.”
And writing in the Daily Mail, Lady Campbell said that at least 15 peers had told her after the debate that her speech helped persuade them to vote against Lord Falconer’s amendment.
8 July 2009

Share this post:

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

Related

‘Muddled’ blue badge reforms ‘are to blame for renewal delays’
6th February 2015
UN debate will be reminder of true inclusive education
6th February 2015
IDS breaks pledge on PIP waiting-times, as tens of thousands still queue for months
30th January 2015

Primary Sidebar

Access

Latest Stories

ONS suggests NHS disability discrimination may have increased risk of COVID deaths

DWP records ‘show Tomlinson is either a liar or a fantasist’ over engagement claims

Audio recording option set to be introduced for all PIP assessments, says DWP

Tomlinson faces third angry letter from DPOs over ‘shambolic’ national disability survey

Guarded response to health and social care white paper

Campaigners seek urgent support for amendments to domestic abuse bill

Government’s pandemic failings have led to ‘bleak picture of marginalisation’

Secret report casts doubt on DWP’s ‘no duty of care’ claim

Disability Unit accused of ‘shameful manipulation’ over disability strategy note

Autistic activist tells MPs of ‘brutal… aggressive… sink or swim’ support system

Advice and Information

DWP: The case for the prosecution

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web