The campaign against vulnerable people being coerced into ending their lives secured another win on Tuesday, when Scottish politicians rejected assisted suicide.
Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) voted 69 to 57 against the euphemistically titled ‘assisted dying’ bill, with one abstention, following a final four-hour debate. The Care Not Killing campaign group said the vote was a win for “the most vulnerable.”
A similar bill, set to cover England and Wales, passed the House of Commons in November 2024, despite UK lawmakers being told by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s own team that it had been rushed, and they regretted that it had been introduced in the first place. The two government officials who would be most involved in the process of deciding who should end their life—the health secretary and the justice secretary—also clearly expressed their opposition.
However, the UK parliament’s bid is also likely to fail after the House of Lords managed to stall the bill.
Law lecturer Philip Murray said the Scottish vote served as further proof that “sense is beginning to prevail after a number of disastrous experiments with euthanasia and assisted suicide around the world,” and celebrated that “the tide is turning.”
Conservative peer Lord Moylan added: “It’s all falling apart for the assisted suicide campaign.”
Scottish Tory MP Murdo Fraser also hailed that lawmakers had rejected the bill “despite a glitzy, well-funded, celebrity-endorsed campaign in support” of it.
But none of this means that the campaign to legalise assisted suicide is over, as one young lobbyist ominously pointed out: “We only have to win the argument once; the opposing side have to [win] it every single time.”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
