Abortion is the euthanasia lobby’s road-map

Monday's Independent newspaper featured an interview with Dr Ann McPherson, who is a spokesman and activist for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (VES) (now all-too-conveniently repackaged as "Dignity in Dying") and its offshoot, Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying - which should more accurately be named "Killing Not Care". The end of the inteview reads:

"McPherson acknowledges that people may be depressed, or feel a burden, or come under pressure from relatives. But these issues are not peculiar to dying – they apply in other areas such as abortion.

Like the Abortion Act, an Assisted Dying Act would be about giving people – in this case the terminally ill – the right to choose. And as with abortion 'you would probably need two doctors to approve it.'"

This is not the first time that the pro-death lobby has argued for assisted suicide using a comparison with the Abortion Act. Debbie Purdy, the disabled woman whose VES-backed court case led to the undermining of protection for the disabled, said:

"Since the 1961 Suicide Act was introduced we have legalised homosexuality and abortion without making them compulsory. We need to look at the law on assisted suicide again and think about how that could be legalised too with proper safeguards in place."

Indeed, Sarah Wootton, the VES's head, used to work for the pro-abortion Family Planning Association (FPA) and was a founding trustee of Abortion Rights.

So it's unsurprising that Dr McPherson doesn't sound particularly bothered about assisted suicides requested under duress. After all, most legal abortions are unwanted or coerced. McPherson's and Wooton's support for assisted suicide is, like their support for abortion, based more on ideology than patient welfare. Should assisted suicide be enshrined in law, the VES will soon be working to undermine the very safeguards they claim to support - just as the pro-abortion organisations which Sarah Wootton used to work for are now lobbying to remove the two-doctors requirement.

So the VES has very helpfully set out their road-map for assisted suicide and euthanasia, based on abortion law. If that road-map is followed, we will thefore see:

• permission in so-called 'hard cases' lead to killing on demand and killing under duress
• so-called safeguards ignored, falsely interpreted and undermined
• medics and others with a conscientious objection persecuted
• taxpayers' money diverted

and many of the other evils attendant upon the practices of the culture of death.

In 1925 a certain Austrian politician set out his own road-map for changing societal norms, including a rejection of the sanctity of life. Many people dismissed the road-map, and labelled the people warning about it as scaremongers. 20 years later over 50 million people lay dead, including millions killed through the author's openness to suicide, euthanasia and abortion. It's high time for a road-block, so I'm greatly relieved by last night's vote by the French Senate to reject assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
Sign up for alerts to new blog-posts and/or for SPUC's other email services
Follow SPUC on Twitter
Join SPUC's Facebook group
Please support SPUC. Please donate, join, and/or leave a legacy