UK Home of Lords Should Reject Legalizing Assisted Suicide

As President Trump travels to the United Kingdom and looks forward to an official welcome of unprecedented scope, the British nation continues to debate the portentous topic of assisted suicide. The debate has been long and arduous, befitting a topic that threatens to undo the safeguards of Hippocratic medicine for the most vulnerable Britons — the aged, the infirm, the despairing, and the disabled. A process that began in the House of Commons in 2024 is reaching its end stage as the House of Lords conducted an extended debate on September 12 that offered fresh hope that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill might be headed for defeat.

That outcome would be significant not only for the U.K. but for other Western democracies where the trend toward legalization and expansion of assisted suicide has been steady if not rapid. As The Washington Stand has chronicled, the assisted suicide bill has passed each phase of the laborious process in Parliament but has been losing altitude with each milestone and record vote. The bill first passed the House of Commons last December by a margin of 330-275, a relatively narrow outcome. Then, at what is called Third Reading in the Commons, more or less final passage in that chamber after the consideration of amendments and scrutiny by a committee of the Commons, the bill was voted through 314 to 291 on June 20 — the margin in favor of the bill having declined by more than half.

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The bill lacked momentum as it headed into the House of Lords. A summary of the September 12 proceedings produced by the policy team for Right to Life U.K. concluded that 58 of the 86 peers who spoke on the bill (itself a large total for any measure) spoke in opposition to it. An argument by some proponents of the bill, sometimes referred to as the Leadbeater bill after its prime sponsor in the Commons, MP Kim Leadbeater, that a measure adopted by the directly elected House of Commons should not or cannot be blocked by the appointed membership of the Lords, seemed to be falling short. Opponents of the bill point to its status as a proposal from a private member of Parliament acting as an individual and not as part of the manifesto, or package of ideas, from the majority Labour Party. A prominent British constitutional scholar, Mark Elliott of Cambridge University, has asserted that the House of Lords is a “revising chamber” that has authority to review and amend proposals from the Commons, and that to conclude otherwise is to hold that the Lords “serves no useful purpose.”

In this instance, the speeches given by the anti-Leadbeater majority were especially pointed. Former Prime Minister Theresa May stated simply, “Suicide is wrong, but this bill effectively says suicide is okay. … It should not pass.” Another speaker, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, cited the experience under Oregon’s assisted suicide law, paralleling the outcomes nearly everywhere euthanasia laws have been adopted or installed by referendum. She noted how Oregon gradually removed a 15-day waiting period before suicide could proceed, the residency requirement was ended, and the definition of a “terminal” condition was widened. She predicted a recurrence in the U.K. if the bill were approved.

As reported by the U.S.-based National Catholic Register, Baroness Rosa Monckton, whose daughter has Down syndrome and is the godchild of the late Princess Diana, presented a message of opposition from more than 350 disability organizations in the U.K. The Baroness said that for parents who had fought long and hard to defend the rights and the value of their child with a disability, a measure designed to facilitate their being thrown away was “inhumane and devastatingly cruel.”  Like other assisted suicide policies, the Leadbeater bill relies for eligibility purposes on medical prognostications about the timing of a patient’s death. With wry humor, Lord Polak rose in opposition to the bill and gibed, “I speak as someone who was given six months to live 37 years ago.”

Another blow against the bill was struck this week with the release of a new report from a Lords committee that found the bill would give “sweeping, unspecified and unjustified powers to the Government” while eliminating the scrutiny such powers should undergo as they are exercised. Most amendments to provide such safeguards were defeated in the last phase of debate and voting in the House of Commons. Examples mentioned by the committee included the types of substances, obviously lethal, that might be used under the bill and how such substances would be safely handled. Another instance is the propoal’s provision regarding independent advocates for particularly vulnerable individuals, such as people with learning disabilities or mental illness whose rights might be compromised. The law does not state a clear duty to ensure that these advocates will be present but leaves the task of such assurance to subsequent regulatory action by the government.

Needless to say, perhaps, this is not a popular time for many citizens to trust governments around the world, including the West. The debate continues to rage in the United States over the extent to which Congress can or should delegate authority to administrative agencies that are free to create expansive requirements and practices not spelled out in the authorizing legislation. This key criticism of the doctrine called Chevron deference in the United States appears to have similar resonance in the Leadbeater debate. Catherine Robinson, spokeswoman for Right to Life U.K., praised the Lords committee report and summarized, “This is an important report that highlights just how unfit this legislation is to become law. The Bill was not adequately scrutinised in the House of Commons, and now a House of Lords Committee has warned that by relying so heavily on delegated powers, a lower standard of scrutiny is being applied to key aspects of the proposed law. Ministers are being given sweeping powers, and the requisite scrutiny for a bill of this magnitude is being circumvented”.

The debate on September 12 lasted nearly seven hours. Another debate is scheduled for this coming Friday the 19th. Under the British Parliamentary system, it is possible, as Professor Elliott points out, that Lords could engage with the House of Commons in what amounts to a game of ping pong, where questions about and amendments to the bill are bandied back and forth between the chambers without a final vote, effectively killing the measure. Most assessments by leaders in Parliament and the British media are concluding that the bill will not pass — as have prior attempts in the U.K. to advance assisted suicide.

One other dynamic of note is the purported position of King Charles III on both assisted suicide and a new bill that would remove protections against abortion throughout pregnancy in the already liberal U.K. Stories appeared last month that the king was having a “dark night of the soul” about giving the measures Royal Assent. This approval is an established step in the U.K. but is considered basically a formality. If the king is indeed troubled by the prospect of signing such radical measures that could lead to the death of thousands of his countrymen and women, that is all the reason why the peers in the House of Lords might act to defeat or to deflect the bill from enactment.

It’s a coincidence that the American president will be in London during the debate this Friday, and he is unlikely to speak to a contentious domestic matter, though his administration has been willing to criticize Great Britain’s punitive practices regarding public speech. The administration has also provided strong support for the rights of medical personnel to refrain from participation in any practice that affronts their conscience rights. In the meantime, assisted suicide will soon be very much in the news again as New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) faces a decision whether or not to sign an assisted suicide law pending before her. Fresh off her endorsement of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who has not been vocal on the issue, Hochul may succumb to enormous pressures from within her party and the Medical Society of the State of New York, which supports the legalization bill.

Defeating this once-seemingly-certain-to-pass bill in Great Britain would represent a great victory for life under difficult conditions and ideally will be echoed here at home. Assisted suicide is a nation-defining drama that is going down to the wire.

LifeNews Note: Chuck Donovan is a 50-year veteran of the national debate over the right to life and served from 1981-89 as a writer in the Reagan White House.He is the former Executive Vice President of Family Research Council.