In the United Kingdom, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s trainwreck assisted suicide committee is making daily headlines as the pro-euthanasia majority votes down safeguard after safeguard. Safeguards have been rejected for those with disabilities; for those with suicidal ideation; for the homeless; even for those who may not be able to fully give consent (a safeguard mandating that the victim must have capacity “beyond a reasonable doubt” was rejected 15-8).
Euthanasia activists promised that the path to a lethal injection would be narrow with high guardrails and intermittent checkpoints. Leadbeater’s committee is creating a virtually unpoliced four-lane highway with no speed limit.
Euthanasia activists claim to be championing “mercy” in the form of the alleviation of suffering by doctor-assisted suicide. This view, of course, is premised on a resolute rejection of the claims of religion, but also an insistence on seeing people as atomized individuals without loved ones to whom that suffering will very often be transferred when the patient is put down by medical practitioners. What happens when someone wants to die, but their loved ones believe other options are available? How can someone experiencing acute mental illness or despair have the capacity for consent?
Kim Leadbeater does not want us to consider these questions, but there are many examples of how these horrifying fights play out. Earlier this month, a 23-year-old Spanish woman, who became paraplegic due injuries she incurred during a suicide attempt in 2022, went to court to assert her right to assisted suicide against the wishes of her desperate father. According to the BBC, it is the first case of its kind—but it will most certainly not be the last. She was scheduled to be killed in August, but her father successfully delayed the final act with legal objections, backed by the Christian Lawyers (Abogados Cristianos) group.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide were legalized in Spain in 2021 for people with severe, chronic, or debilitating conditions and chronic diseases, provided they are competent to make the decision. The young woman’s father asserts that his daughter has a personality disorder which impacts her judgement and is highlighting “the obligation of the state to protect the lives of people, especially the most vulnerable, as is the case with a young person with mental health problems.” He also stated that his daughter has responded well to rehabilitation treatment and that she has changed her mind about receiving euthanasia several times.
The regional government of Catalonia, on the other hand, is backing the 23-year-old’s request to die, and a local euthanasia panel voted unanimously in favor in July 2024. The Catalan government’s lawyer has countered the father’s case by insisting that “no evidence of a scientific or expert character has been presented to contradict the many medical reports which support the decision to [die].” The father is not an “expert,” and thus his testimony concerning his own daughter is irrelevant. Her previous suicide attempt, which would have once been universally recognized as a sign of mental illness, is also apparently of no relevance.
The public prosecutor has declined to take a position on the case and is calling on the judge to make the call after hearing from the young woman and various “experts,” including a member of the euthanasia panel. The BBC noted that last year, “a magistrate in Barcelona rejected an attempt by a man to appeal against his 54-year-old son’s euthanasia after it had been approved by the guarantee and evaluation board.” The young woman has stated that she feels “misunderstood by my family,” but it appears that they understand her all too well. She wants to die. They want her to live. The decision will be made by “experts” and a judge who do not know her or love her.
A similar situation unfolded last year in Canada. A father had successfully blocked his 27-year-old daughter’s attempt to undergo assisted suicide on the grounds that she had autism and ADHD and was extremely vulnerable and thus not competent enough to make the decision to die. Two doctors must sign off for assisted suicide to proceed in Canada, and one had refused. A third was found to approve the decision, and the father claimed that the tiebreaker was neither independent nor objective, and noted that his daughter was physically healthy.
Despite that, in March, a judge ruled in favor of the young woman, writing that although the father would experience “profound grief,” her autonomy was ultimately more important, writing: “M.V.’s [the 27-year-old] dignity and right to self-determination outweighs the important matters raised by W.V. [the father] and the harm that he will suffer in losing M.V. Though I find that W.V. has raised serious issues, I conclude that M.V.’s autonomy and dignity interests outweigh competing considerations.” The father was given thirty days to appeal but appears to have given up the case last June. As with the Spanish father, he found the full force of the state, which sanctions the “right” to suicide, arrayed against him.
Dozens of other examples of family trauma could be cited. One Canadian man was informed that his sister had died by lethal injection when her building manager called to tell him the coroner had just left her apartment. Another told a national newspaper that he still experiences nightmares about his father’s death by lethal injection, which the family had opposed. Two daughters in British Columbia found out that their mother had been killed by a euthanasia practitioner via text message. These family members have been told that assisted suicide is a tool that ends suffering. Their experience of despair, helplessness, and grief tell a very different story.
Millions of people have had the experience of suffering alongside a loved one struggling with mental illness and suicidal ideation. Wherever assisted suicide is legalized, that suffering becomes even more acute, as family members face the specter of a state hellbent on affirming suicidal ideation and facilitating the lethal injection to accomplish the deed while they are forced to stand helplessly and hopelessly by. Leadbeater and her allies have already implied that loved ones seeking to dissuade their family members constitutes a form of “coercion.” They claim that they seek to end suffering.
But as cases of desperate fathers seeking to save the lives of their young daughters so brutally reveal, the world they seek to bring about will accomplish precisely the opposite.
The State’s ‘Treatment’ for Mental Illness? Death
Image: Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
In the United Kingdom, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s trainwreck assisted suicide committee is making daily headlines as the pro-euthanasia majority votes down safeguard after safeguard. Safeguards have been rejected for those with disabilities; for those with suicidal ideation; for the homeless; even for those who may not be able to fully give consent (a safeguard mandating that the victim must have capacity “beyond a reasonable doubt” was rejected 15-8).
Euthanasia activists promised that the path to a lethal injection would be narrow with high guardrails and intermittent checkpoints. Leadbeater’s committee is creating a virtually unpoliced four-lane highway with no speed limit.
Euthanasia activists claim to be championing “mercy” in the form of the alleviation of suffering by doctor-assisted suicide. This view, of course, is premised on a resolute rejection of the claims of religion, but also an insistence on seeing people as atomized individuals without loved ones to whom that suffering will very often be transferred when the patient is put down by medical practitioners. What happens when someone wants to die, but their loved ones believe other options are available? How can someone experiencing acute mental illness or despair have the capacity for consent?
Kim Leadbeater does not want us to consider these questions, but there are many examples of how these horrifying fights play out. Earlier this month, a 23-year-old Spanish woman, who became paraplegic due injuries she incurred during a suicide attempt in 2022, went to court to assert her right to assisted suicide against the wishes of her desperate father. According to the BBC, it is the first case of its kind—but it will most certainly not be the last. She was scheduled to be killed in August, but her father successfully delayed the final act with legal objections, backed by the Christian Lawyers (Abogados Cristianos) group.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide were legalized in Spain in 2021 for people with severe, chronic, or debilitating conditions and chronic diseases, provided they are competent to make the decision. The young woman’s father asserts that his daughter has a personality disorder which impacts her judgement and is highlighting “the obligation of the state to protect the lives of people, especially the most vulnerable, as is the case with a young person with mental health problems.” He also stated that his daughter has responded well to rehabilitation treatment and that she has changed her mind about receiving euthanasia several times.
The regional government of Catalonia, on the other hand, is backing the 23-year-old’s request to die, and a local euthanasia panel voted unanimously in favor in July 2024. The Catalan government’s lawyer has countered the father’s case by insisting that “no evidence of a scientific or expert character has been presented to contradict the many medical reports which support the decision to [die].” The father is not an “expert,” and thus his testimony concerning his own daughter is irrelevant. Her previous suicide attempt, which would have once been universally recognized as a sign of mental illness, is also apparently of no relevance.
The public prosecutor has declined to take a position on the case and is calling on the judge to make the call after hearing from the young woman and various “experts,” including a member of the euthanasia panel. The BBC noted that last year, “a magistrate in Barcelona rejected an attempt by a man to appeal against his 54-year-old son’s euthanasia after it had been approved by the guarantee and evaluation board.” The young woman has stated that she feels “misunderstood by my family,” but it appears that they understand her all too well. She wants to die. They want her to live. The decision will be made by “experts” and a judge who do not know her or love her.
A similar situation unfolded last year in Canada. A father had successfully blocked his 27-year-old daughter’s attempt to undergo assisted suicide on the grounds that she had autism and ADHD and was extremely vulnerable and thus not competent enough to make the decision to die. Two doctors must sign off for assisted suicide to proceed in Canada, and one had refused. A third was found to approve the decision, and the father claimed that the tiebreaker was neither independent nor objective, and noted that his daughter was physically healthy.
Despite that, in March, a judge ruled in favor of the young woman, writing that although the father would experience “profound grief,” her autonomy was ultimately more important, writing: “M.V.’s [the 27-year-old] dignity and right to self-determination outweighs the important matters raised by W.V. [the father] and the harm that he will suffer in losing M.V. Though I find that W.V. has raised serious issues, I conclude that M.V.’s autonomy and dignity interests outweigh competing considerations.” The father was given thirty days to appeal but appears to have given up the case last June. As with the Spanish father, he found the full force of the state, which sanctions the “right” to suicide, arrayed against him.
Dozens of other examples of family trauma could be cited. One Canadian man was informed that his sister had died by lethal injection when her building manager called to tell him the coroner had just left her apartment. Another told a national newspaper that he still experiences nightmares about his father’s death by lethal injection, which the family had opposed. Two daughters in British Columbia found out that their mother had been killed by a euthanasia practitioner via text message. These family members have been told that assisted suicide is a tool that ends suffering. Their experience of despair, helplessness, and grief tell a very different story.
Millions of people have had the experience of suffering alongside a loved one struggling with mental illness and suicidal ideation. Wherever assisted suicide is legalized, that suffering becomes even more acute, as family members face the specter of a state hellbent on affirming suicidal ideation and facilitating the lethal injection to accomplish the deed while they are forced to stand helplessly and hopelessly by. Leadbeater and her allies have already implied that loved ones seeking to dissuade their family members constitutes a form of “coercion.” They claim that they seek to end suffering.
But as cases of desperate fathers seeking to save the lives of their young daughters so brutally reveal, the world they seek to bring about will accomplish precisely the opposite.
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