New fight for right-to-die law for terminally ill in Scotland

RIGHT-TO-DIE campaigners are pushing for Scotland to follow Canada, Australia and parts of the United States by introducing legislation that would give terminally ill patients the opportunity to end their lives.

The renewed bid for a law on assisted suicide comes nearly two years after the last Bill was thrown out by MSPs over fears it posed a risk to vulnerable individuals such as the elderly and disabled.

However, campaigners say the law in Scotland and the rest of the UK is now “lagging behind” similar developed nations and argue that restricting medical interventions to patients who are already terminally ill – but excluding those with life-limiting conditions such as dementia or paralysis – will prevent potential abuses.

Dignity in Dying Scotland, the pressure group which is calling on MSPs to bring forward a new Bill, said it would end unnecessary suffering and hand people autonomy over their own deaths.

Ally Thomson, the organisation’s director, said: “Our current law is not working – it forces terminally ill people to suffer against their wishes while families and loved ones watch on helplessly. It creates a situation where some people, who can afford it, travel abroad to die, while others resort to taking drastic measures behind closed doors – with no safeguards. It is not compassionate or safe and dying people here deserve better. We are calling for a range of end-of-life choices that includes more and better palliative care but also the choice of an assisted death for when palliative care is no longer working.”

The Bill would urge Scotland to adopt the assisted suicide model first pioneered in the US state of Oregon and which has remained unchanged since it was introduced there in 1997. Under this framework, the right to die is limited to terminally ill and mentally-competent adults. Family doctors are allowed to prescribe a fatal dose of medication, but the dying person must be able to administer without assistance from another person, including medics. The Oregon system is also in place in California, Washington, Vermont and Montana, while Canada began offering it in June last year following a ruling by its Supreme Court that a blanket ban on assisted dying was unconstitutional.

In December 2016, Australian politicians also voted to introduce assisted dying in the state of Victoria during 2017, and the New Zealand parliament will consider the issue this year. A Populus poll of 5,000 British adults in 2015 found 83 per cent support for legalising assisted suicide, but MPs subsequently reject- ed an Oregon-style right-to-die Bill which would have handed terminally ill people in England with fewer than six months to live the right to be prescribed a lethal dose of drugs.

However, the case of Noel Conway – a 67-year-old who is terminally ill with motor neurone disease – has brought the issue back into the spotlight after the High Court in London last week granted him the right to challenge the law on assisted dying in England and Wales. Campaigners believe the case should also provide an impetus to rethink the law north of the border, without waiting for a similar test case here.

Patrick Harvie, the Green MSP who brought Scotland’s last assisted dying Bill to Holyrood on behalf of the late Margo Macdonald, said: “Public opinion has been ahead of politicians for a long time and one of the frustrations is that it tends to take hard cases – either in law or in