The U.K. Takes Another Step Toward State-Sponsored Euthanasia

The decision by the United Kingdom’s Parliament to give a preliminary go-ahead for an assisted suicide regime in England and Wales represents a heartbreaking tragedy on two levels. It reinforces how our modern culture has devalued human life and exemplifies how government-run health care systems have accelerated this devaluation.

The recent vote does not guarantee the measure will be enacted into law; it merely continues the legislative process, and lawmakers can — and should — reject it during subsequent stages. But it comes nine years after the same Parliament, by a nearly three-to-one margin, rejected any changes to the law on assisted suicide.

During the debate, the bill’s sponsor, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, claimed that the legislation contained “the most robust and strongest set of safeguards and protections in the world.” But in October, Justin Welby, who as Archbishop of Canterbury heads the Church of England, rightly observed that passing any legislation permitting assisted suicide “opens the way to it broadening out, such that people who are not in that situation [i.e., terminally ill] asking for this, or feeling pressured to ask for it.”

Indeed, that is exactly what has happened in other countries. Canada has vastly expanded its assisted suicide regime, loosening criteria to allow for same-day suicide and expanding the number of conditions that qualify. As a result, the number of assisted suicides in Canada rose by at least 13-fold from 2016 to 2022, and now numbers over 13,000 per year.

Beyond a move toward assisted suicide, Canada shares something else in common with Great Britain: a single-payer system of socialized medicine. Canadians have documented cases in which the health care bureaucracy has encouraged individuals to commit assisted suicide, presumably because such “resolutions” are far cheaper for the government-run health system than treating patients’ underlying conditions.

The United Kingdom faces similar fiscal pressures, as the new Labour government has already announced massive tax increases to fund the country’s National Health Service. Time will tell if this additional funding can prevent the perennial “winter crisis” that hits the NHS practically every year. But when Archbishop Welby said he “worried people would feel compelled to ask to die if they felt like a burden,” according to the BBC, he had every right to sound this concern.

As a disability advocate and former member of the National Council on Disability, I worry that this spreading “culture of death” could ultimately affect my daughter who has cystic fibrosis. I value every human life, from conception to natural death, and find the way in which our modern culture views people as disposable as appalling as it is tragic.

The most vulnerable in our society — those who have no one to speak for them — are most at risk in this brave new world. We must reinforce the message that vulnerable people are valuable people and make a commitment to provide them with the health care and mental and psychological support they need, such that they never feel pressured to take their own lives.

I hope that members of Parliament will come to their senses and reject the assisted suicide measure before it makes it onto the statute books. For human life — any life and every life — is a terrible thing to waste.

Mary Vought is a disability advocate, and you can follow her on X @MaryVought.