British Pro-Euthanasia Legislation Raises Medical Ethics Questions in Europe

Since the British Parliament’s passing of the pro-euthanasia Mental Capacity Bill on 5th April in the House of the Lords, fear has been raised among pro-lifers that the legislation may fuel a decline in medical ethics in the UK which may spread to Europe.

The largest pro-life group in Europe - the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) - based in the UK, stated on a press release that the Mental Capacity Bill "heralds the end of the Hippocratic tradition of medical ethics in Britain".

Prior to the last reading of the bill by the House of the Lords, SPUC warned the British Parliament of the existing dangers, and they used the recent euthanasia controversy in Terri Schiavo’s case in the United States.

The Mental Capacity Bill will allow mentally incapacitated patients who are terminally ill or dying to appoint a relative or friend to make future decisions on their behalf and will allow people with no-one to act for them to leave instructions regarding their future treatment. The Bill was accused of "legalising euthanasia by neglect and assisted suicide for vulnerable adults". In critical circumstances, the Bill can lead to another Terri Schiavo’s tragedy.

Anthony Ozimic, SPUC political secretary, said, "We can expect more Schiavo-like killings when the Bill comes into force."

Ozimic said, "The passage of the Bill will have profound repercussions - it will mean that doctors will be forced to choose between killing some of their patients and leaving the profession. It will destroy what is left of medical ethics in this country."

"Doctors who refuse on clinical or other ethical grounds to implement an advance refusal of treatment face litigation and possibly criminal conviction. Even in situations where there is no obligation to provide therapeutic measures (for example, when they are ineffective) there remains a duty of care towards the patient. It would be unreasonable, and immoral, to force healthcare professionals to relinquish this responsibility because of their conscientious objection to implementing clinically inappropriate or unethical advance refusals."

Britain’s largest organisations of Christian doctors and lawyers have expressed similar concern. Charlotte Vincent of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, said, "A change in the law would give doctors power that could be too easily abused, and a responsibility that they should not be entitled to have."

The Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) criticised the Lord’s committee of lacking "the wisdom and courage unequivocally to reject euthanasia in the face of a strong and emotive campaign from factions seeking a change in the law."

The Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Rev Christopher Herbert, who was a member of the committee, welcomed the report, according to a press release from the Church of England. However, he was in fact opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide and believed that the Bill should be rejected.

Instead of providing the choice of euthanaisa, Bishop Herbert pointed out that palliative care in the UK to enable people to die with dignity and be surrounded by compassion should be improved. The current Bill could distract us from this task, he said.

"There are so many dangers in euthanasia and it could lead to terrifying slippery slopes. The solution to dying with dignity lies not with euthanasia but with palliative care," he added.

Yesterday, the London Telegraph revealed the result of a recent study published in The Lancet. The study examined the deaths of every baby who died within a year of birth in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium, between August 1999 and July 2000. Paediatricians who responded to the survey admitted they had taken "end of life" decisions in more than half the cases.

In 1995, Holland legalised euthanasia. And in 2002, Belgium passed a similar law which allows adults who are suffering "constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain", and who are sufficiently conscious to make the request to die. However, in neither country is it legal to put infants to death. The current phenomenon in Flanders therefore is very worrying, showing that the legalisation of euthanasia for adult is extending to the illegal application towards infants.

Britain has been called by many to consider deeper all the ramifications of the Mental Capacity Bill that could possibly intensify the abuse of the law for Euthanasia. Ozimic from SPUC concluded in his statement, "Just as the Westminster Parliament was the first Western legislature to legalise abortion on a mass scale, and the first legislature to legalise human cloning, it has added to its shameful record by being the first legislature to pass a comprehensive statute enshrining euthanasia by omission on a grand scale."