Assisted Suicide Legislation – Update
Both Holyrood and Westminster Parliaments are still actively engaging with this issue. In Scotland, while there is significant public support, legal and constitutional hurdles may delay the Bill’s enactment even if it is approved in Holyrood. In Westminster, the Bill faces time constraints and concerns over safeguards, but it continues to progress through the legislative process.
In England, on 13 June, a second day of discussion on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is due to take place before the House of Commons. The Royal College of Nursing maintains a neutral stance but emphasises the need for adequate safeguards to protect nurses and nursing practice. The Royal College of Psychiatrists is against, and warns that the bill could be misused by individuals suffering from depression, highlighting the risk of abuse and the strain on psychiatric resources. The Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has expressed concerns over the limited time allotted for debate, noting that only two of over 100 proposed amendments were discussed due to time constraints.
The lack of debating time, the disallowing of many reasonable suggestions for amendments at the committee stage, and the removal of the requirement for a judge to take part in the final decision of an application, have caused great concern. A number of MPs who supported the bill in principle have said that they can no longer support this bill. Members from across the political spectrum have raised issues over the potential for coercion, hospices’ inability to opt out, and the potential for vulnerable people to feel a duty to die for fear of being a burden. Wherever assisted suicide or euthanasia has been allowed, its scope has always radically and dramatically increased and yet there are no safeguards in this Bill to guard against this.
In Scotland, on May 13, Parliament passed the first stage of the Assisted
Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill introduced by the Liberal Democrat MSP, Liam MacArthur. The vote was 70 in favour and 56 against, with one abstention. This margin is so low that the Bill will fall if just 7 MSPs change their minds and vote against.
Unlike in Westminster, the Scottish bill does not have a life expectancy timescale. It instead refers to an advanced and progressive disease that is expected to cause premature death. It proposes to allow mentally competent adults over 16, who are diagnosed with a terminal illness and residing in Scotland for at least a year, to request medical assistance to end their lives. Young persons of 16 years old can vote in elections in Scotland, but many are questioning the wisdom of persons so young being permitted to seek assisted suicide.
First Minister John Swinney, Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar have all spoken out against the bill. The former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was another high-profile MSP who voted against it.
The Scottish Government has raised concerns that aspects of the Bill, particularly those related to the specification of lethal drugs, may fall outside Holyrood’s legislative competence, as regulation of medicines and poisons is reserved to Westminster. Scottish legal experts suggest that the entire Bill may require a Section 30 order, which is a formal temporary transfer of powers from Westminster to be lawfully enacted, a process that could take 12 to 18 months and necessitates UK government approval.
MSPs will be able to scrutinise the Bill further at stage two, where they can also propose changes. Another vote on the final draft of the bill would need to be held before it could become legislation.
The Saviour said of Satan that he “was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth” (Jn 8:44) and he can put suicidal thoughts into the minds of those who are downcast and feeling at the end of their tether. He is now stirring up our rulers to make it easy for poor souls to hasten their end. They do not know, and are not taught, that God in Christ, the “Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort,” is able to uphold all those who call upon His name and enable them to say in the worst of situations, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor 12:9). FRD
Newly Formed Rocks
Researchers at Glasgow University have found rock on the beach at Derwent Howe, on the Cumbrian coast, which has been formed by natural processes during the last century. In one place, the rock has been formed in the last 35
years because it contains an aluminium tab from a drinks can made after 1989. Other items in the rock include a George V coin, a car tyre, and an electric cable. The rock is “elastic sedimentary” – it consists of fragments or “clasts” of older rocks and other materials (such as bits of rubbish) held together by a cementing material or “matrix”. Much of the material comes from an old iron and steel slag heap that borders on the beach and is being eroded by the sea.
The interesting point is that the fragments broken off from the slag heap are being deposited on the beach by the tide and the waves, along with other pebbles and whatever, and the assorted shingle on the beach is then being incorporated into new rock. The slag is rich in calcium, magnesium, iron, and manganese and it is thought that the presence of these elements facilitates the rapid “lithification”, or formation of the new rock. The rock-forming process itself, however, is entirely natural and the shingle beach is rapidly turning into a sloping platform of rock.
The paper describing this is published in the prestigious Geology journal and it takes good care to emphasise the “anthropogenic”, or human, origin of the slag. The question which must be on everybody’s mind, however – but which is studiously avoided in all the discussion – is whether some similarly rapid natural process may have been responsible for other sedimentary rocks round the world. The implications of this for geology and evolutionary theory would be enormous. Geologists have long dismissed the early chapters of Genesis as fabulous and boasted of confining themselves to the hard facts of science. This latest research threatens to expose one of their own “hard facts” – that sedimentary rock requires “thousands to millions of years” to form – as a modern fable. Indeed, scientists may soon be observing the formation of sedimentary rock in the laboratory. DWBS
Church Information
Removed by Death
We note with sadness the death of two men who served as elders for many years. Mr Donald Angus Mackay, of the Uig congregation, in Lewis, passed away on May 18. And Mr Tom Maton, of the Gairloch congregation, died on May 28. May the Lord raise up others to take the place of those whom He removes to a better world!