As the UK moves ahead of Ireland, inexorably towards the introduction of a regime of assisted suicide, people here are worried that where the UK goes, Ireland eventually follows. In 2024, the Irish parliament held a cross-house (Joint Oireachtas) Committee on Assisted Dying, with the final report making recommendations to Parliament to introduce a regime of assisted suicide in the near future. Thankfully, for many vulnerable people, the previous government was disbanded and replaced in early 2025 before progress had been made in terms of draft legislation. Thankfully, again, the new government makes no commitments in this regard, but that is not to say that the issue will not resurface on the back of the work done in 2024.
Criticisms abound against the process taken forward by Kim Leadbeater in the UK House of Commons, citing lack of scrutiny, loading the bases in terms of the Committee established to scrutinise the Private Members’ Bill and the lack of time to scrutinise the bill or to prepare evidence, along with the fact that none of the eight witnesses from foreign jurisdictions nor the nine lawyers presenting opposed assisted suicide. The Irish process was more protracted, and the balance of the evidence given demonstrated the risks of introducing a regime of assisted suicide. Yet, the final report of the Irish Committee went against this evidence, with 11 of the 14 committee members supporting the recommendations to introduce legislation allowing for assisted suicide.
How many lives will be sacrificed as collateral damage as Ireland succumbs to the scent of freedom to choose at the end of life just as it did for life at its earliest stages when it removed the constitutional protection for the unborn in 2018? No doubt, the human being is at its most vulnerable when it is at either end of the life cycle. The unborn child, for at least 22 weeks of its life, is fully dependent on its mother for survival. It is dependent on a legal, social, and cultural surrounding that protects it from fully grown adult humans. The law considers that this protection is needed until the child reaches 18 years of age.
It is only then that the human person is considered to be fully matured and becomes subject to the full rigours of the law and deprived of protections and derogations that it had enjoyed until that very point. Ironically, the law withdraws protection from minors when they are at their earliest stages and at their most vulnerable.
Until three months after conception, the human child has no rights under the law in Ireland. None. The arbitrary selection of 12 weeks when some limited protections are introduced has never been justified. The child is neither seen nor heard in society at this stage. For all intents and purposes, it does not exist unless it is a wanted child.
The collateral impact on children who would not have been aborted is clear from the figures. Just over 3,000 abortions were carried out overseas on Irish children in the years leading up to the removal of the 8th amendment to the constitution. That number has jumped to over 10,000 in 2023. That is 7,000 additional child deaths in the name of choice. And it is rising annually.
Now, the attention turns to assisted suicide. No collateral damage is deemed sufficient to the proponents of euthanasia, either in Ireland or in the UK.
Writing in the Spectator, Peter Sefton-Williams tells of his lucky escape from the trappings of assisted suicide. Mistakenly diagnosed with motor neuron disease, which was independently verified by a second opinion, he was all set to make his application to Dignitas in Switzerland to avoid the pain and suffering of what he was told was imminent and unavoidable death from MND. However, his Catholic faith deterred him sufficiently that he did not take the next steps, and, a few months later, he was found to have multifocal motor neuropathy, a mild condition that is not terminal and which, in most cases, is treatable.
One of the strongest arguments against the death penalty is that it cannot be undone. It is a final decision, and there is no way to undo a miscarriage of justice. Assisted suicide is the same, yet the arguments presented act as if doctors are omnipotent when it comes to this particular area, just as they are assumed under the law to be when it comes to life-limiting conditions in the unborn child. Time and again they are proven fallible, but this makes no impact on proponents of choice. These are unfortunate but necessary examples of collateral damage.
In relation to assisted suicide, there is much more. Reported in the Spectator, Meredith Blake, of the University of Western Australia, when being told that 35% of those who choose assisted suicide cite feeling a burden as a reason for choosing, denied that there was anything wrong with that. “People can feel that they are a burden, and that is part of their autonomous thinking. People have their own views of their own life.”
There is no argument that cannot be rationalised by freedom of choice. That they would never be made to feel like a burden in a society that provided the necessary support and care, and the social and cultural respect due to people needing assistance, whether in old age or with a disability, is neither here nor there. That ‘autonomous thinking’ is shaped by the coercive legal, social, economic, and cultural milieu in which they live is irrelevant when it comes to ‘choice.’
Choice does not occur in a vacuum. Choice—and our response to the options available—is shaped by the law. The culture we live in is shaped by the law. Society is shaped by the law. To deny this is to deny that the law has any relevance.
Just as abortion has become unquestioned in Irish—indeed, almost all of ‘Western’—society, the expansion of choice comes with the erosion of society’s bonds, where interdependence requires personal care and personal relations. The majority of people cite rape, incest, risk to the health/life of the mother, or fatal foetal anomaly as the main reasons abortion should be allowed. Yet, the majority of abortions are carried out as a result of (about 95%) unintended pregnancies. The reasons for choosing abortion in these pregnancies are not the reasons offered as justification for legislating for abortion, but financial circumstances (40%), timing issues (36%), partner-related issues (31%), other responsibilities (29%; 20% of people reported having an abortion because the timing would interfere with their future opportunities and goals), and 19% saying they were emotionally or mentally unprepared.
These are statistics from the U.S. Ireland does not consider it important or useful to collect such data because the government chooses not to.
The percentage of pregnancies in the UK that end in abortion, at a time of unimpeded access to contraception, has risen from under 6% in 1969 to 25% today. That is one in four pregnancies. About 95 per cent of parents whose babies are diagnosed with Down syndrome at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin choose to have an abortion. People with Down syndrome are collateral damage. They are being wiped out in a manner that, if the figures were relating to any other population group, at any other stage in life, would be considered a crime against humanity.
The next horizon is surrogacy, where the desires of adults will place future children as potential collateral damage, where they will be created, often without having the right to know or be brought up by their biological mother or father, or both. The Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Act 2024 in Ireland creates a legal right for adults to create children through surrogacy (for once going against the trends in Europe), while assuming none of the safeguards that the adoption process has in place for screening adults who wish to take non-biological children under their care and trusteeship.
When seeking to adopt in Ireland, prospective non-biological parents undergo extensive vetting, home visits, interviews, courses and background checks. For non-biological prospective adults seeking surrogacy, none of this applies. While not flawless, the protection that the biological link provides to the child is what holds families and societies together. This understanding is why those seeking to adopt are subjected to such a rigorous process. There is no reason given for surrogate parents to be exempt from this safeguarding. Yet, here we are. For some reason, the rights of the prospective child are subsumed beneath the desires of prospective parents.
The desire of adults to procreate and have children is understandable. Having struggled in this regard for years before having the joy of a baby, my wife and I know full well how painful the prospect of infertility is. But is this sufficient reason to allow a regime that rejects basic rights of the child along with the high likelihood of exploitation of vulnerable and economically challenged women? I do not feel that it is.
Nor do many European countries, such as Poland, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, where surrogacy is prohibited by law. Italy has prohibited seeking surrogacy abroad, as there is no ‘right to a child’ under international law. The UK was ahead of Ireland in allowing surrogacy arrangements under the law. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) has warned that the commercial surrogacy industry in many countries is rife with human rights abuse, and concerns, beyond the ethics of surrogacy itself, have been raised, warning that while the law protects women in Ireland somewhat, it offers significant risk of abuse through international surrogacy arrangements. The 2024 Act also creates, with barely a dissenting voice, a legal regimen for the testing and destruction of human embryos. Previously in Ireland, there was a genuine debate as to the ethical standing of the embryo and a near consensus that life began at conception. In 20 years, that position has almost disappeared as a utilitarian ethic that prioritises and values present-day adult happiness over any objective morality has taken over.
Alex Greenwich, of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, in a pithy—and extremely unfortunate—comment, summed up the delusion of choice when he said, “Voluntary assisted dying is a form of suicide prevention.” Make of that what you will.
The Collateral Damage in a Dictatorship of Choice
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As the UK moves ahead of Ireland, inexorably towards the introduction of a regime of assisted suicide, people here are worried that where the UK goes, Ireland eventually follows. In 2024, the Irish parliament held a cross-house (Joint Oireachtas) Committee on Assisted Dying, with the final report making recommendations to Parliament to introduce a regime of assisted suicide in the near future. Thankfully, for many vulnerable people, the previous government was disbanded and replaced in early 2025 before progress had been made in terms of draft legislation. Thankfully, again, the new government makes no commitments in this regard, but that is not to say that the issue will not resurface on the back of the work done in 2024.
Criticisms abound against the process taken forward by Kim Leadbeater in the UK House of Commons, citing lack of scrutiny, loading the bases in terms of the Committee established to scrutinise the Private Members’ Bill and the lack of time to scrutinise the bill or to prepare evidence, along with the fact that none of the eight witnesses from foreign jurisdictions nor the nine lawyers presenting opposed assisted suicide. The Irish process was more protracted, and the balance of the evidence given demonstrated the risks of introducing a regime of assisted suicide. Yet, the final report of the Irish Committee went against this evidence, with 11 of the 14 committee members supporting the recommendations to introduce legislation allowing for assisted suicide.
How many lives will be sacrificed as collateral damage as Ireland succumbs to the scent of freedom to choose at the end of life just as it did for life at its earliest stages when it removed the constitutional protection for the unborn in 2018? No doubt, the human being is at its most vulnerable when it is at either end of the life cycle. The unborn child, for at least 22 weeks of its life, is fully dependent on its mother for survival. It is dependent on a legal, social, and cultural surrounding that protects it from fully grown adult humans. The law considers that this protection is needed until the child reaches 18 years of age.
It is only then that the human person is considered to be fully matured and becomes subject to the full rigours of the law and deprived of protections and derogations that it had enjoyed until that very point. Ironically, the law withdraws protection from minors when they are at their earliest stages and at their most vulnerable.
Until three months after conception, the human child has no rights under the law in Ireland. None. The arbitrary selection of 12 weeks when some limited protections are introduced has never been justified. The child is neither seen nor heard in society at this stage. For all intents and purposes, it does not exist unless it is a wanted child.
The collateral impact on children who would not have been aborted is clear from the figures. Just over 3,000 abortions were carried out overseas on Irish children in the years leading up to the removal of the 8th amendment to the constitution. That number has jumped to over 10,000 in 2023. That is 7,000 additional child deaths in the name of choice. And it is rising annually.
Now, the attention turns to assisted suicide. No collateral damage is deemed sufficient to the proponents of euthanasia, either in Ireland or in the UK.
Writing in the Spectator, Peter Sefton-Williams tells of his lucky escape from the trappings of assisted suicide. Mistakenly diagnosed with motor neuron disease, which was independently verified by a second opinion, he was all set to make his application to Dignitas in Switzerland to avoid the pain and suffering of what he was told was imminent and unavoidable death from MND. However, his Catholic faith deterred him sufficiently that he did not take the next steps, and, a few months later, he was found to have multifocal motor neuropathy, a mild condition that is not terminal and which, in most cases, is treatable.
One of the strongest arguments against the death penalty is that it cannot be undone. It is a final decision, and there is no way to undo a miscarriage of justice. Assisted suicide is the same, yet the arguments presented act as if doctors are omnipotent when it comes to this particular area, just as they are assumed under the law to be when it comes to life-limiting conditions in the unborn child. Time and again they are proven fallible, but this makes no impact on proponents of choice. These are unfortunate but necessary examples of collateral damage.
In relation to assisted suicide, there is much more. Reported in the Spectator, Meredith Blake, of the University of Western Australia, when being told that 35% of those who choose assisted suicide cite feeling a burden as a reason for choosing, denied that there was anything wrong with that. “People can feel that they are a burden, and that is part of their autonomous thinking. People have their own views of their own life.”
There is no argument that cannot be rationalised by freedom of choice. That they would never be made to feel like a burden in a society that provided the necessary support and care, and the social and cultural respect due to people needing assistance, whether in old age or with a disability, is neither here nor there. That ‘autonomous thinking’ is shaped by the coercive legal, social, economic, and cultural milieu in which they live is irrelevant when it comes to ‘choice.’
Choice does not occur in a vacuum. Choice—and our response to the options available—is shaped by the law. The culture we live in is shaped by the law. Society is shaped by the law. To deny this is to deny that the law has any relevance.
Just as abortion has become unquestioned in Irish—indeed, almost all of ‘Western’—society, the expansion of choice comes with the erosion of society’s bonds, where interdependence requires personal care and personal relations. The majority of people cite rape, incest, risk to the health/life of the mother, or fatal foetal anomaly as the main reasons abortion should be allowed. Yet, the majority of abortions are carried out as a result of (about 95%) unintended pregnancies. The reasons for choosing abortion in these pregnancies are not the reasons offered as justification for legislating for abortion, but financial circumstances (40%), timing issues (36%), partner-related issues (31%), other responsibilities (29%; 20% of people reported having an abortion because the timing would interfere with their future opportunities and goals), and 19% saying they were emotionally or mentally unprepared.
These are statistics from the U.S. Ireland does not consider it important or useful to collect such data because the government chooses not to.
The percentage of pregnancies in the UK that end in abortion, at a time of unimpeded access to contraception, has risen from under 6% in 1969 to 25% today. That is one in four pregnancies. About 95 per cent of parents whose babies are diagnosed with Down syndrome at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin choose to have an abortion. People with Down syndrome are collateral damage. They are being wiped out in a manner that, if the figures were relating to any other population group, at any other stage in life, would be considered a crime against humanity.
The next horizon is surrogacy, where the desires of adults will place future children as potential collateral damage, where they will be created, often without having the right to know or be brought up by their biological mother or father, or both. The Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Act 2024 in Ireland creates a legal right for adults to create children through surrogacy (for once going against the trends in Europe), while assuming none of the safeguards that the adoption process has in place for screening adults who wish to take non-biological children under their care and trusteeship.
When seeking to adopt in Ireland, prospective non-biological parents undergo extensive vetting, home visits, interviews, courses and background checks. For non-biological prospective adults seeking surrogacy, none of this applies. While not flawless, the protection that the biological link provides to the child is what holds families and societies together. This understanding is why those seeking to adopt are subjected to such a rigorous process. There is no reason given for surrogate parents to be exempt from this safeguarding. Yet, here we are. For some reason, the rights of the prospective child are subsumed beneath the desires of prospective parents.
The desire of adults to procreate and have children is understandable. Having struggled in this regard for years before having the joy of a baby, my wife and I know full well how painful the prospect of infertility is. But is this sufficient reason to allow a regime that rejects basic rights of the child along with the high likelihood of exploitation of vulnerable and economically challenged women? I do not feel that it is.
Nor do many European countries, such as Poland, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, where surrogacy is prohibited by law. Italy has prohibited seeking surrogacy abroad, as there is no ‘right to a child’ under international law. The UK was ahead of Ireland in allowing surrogacy arrangements under the law. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) has warned that the commercial surrogacy industry in many countries is rife with human rights abuse, and concerns, beyond the ethics of surrogacy itself, have been raised, warning that while the law protects women in Ireland somewhat, it offers significant risk of abuse through international surrogacy arrangements. The 2024 Act also creates, with barely a dissenting voice, a legal regimen for the testing and destruction of human embryos. Previously in Ireland, there was a genuine debate as to the ethical standing of the embryo and a near consensus that life began at conception. In 20 years, that position has almost disappeared as a utilitarian ethic that prioritises and values present-day adult happiness over any objective morality has taken over.
Alex Greenwich, of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, in a pithy—and extremely unfortunate—comment, summed up the delusion of choice when he said, “Voluntary assisted dying is a form of suicide prevention.” Make of that what you will.
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