Terminally ill people could sign a 'death contract' allowing doctors to help them end their lives under new legal proposals. A template for a patient's declaration of their desire to die has been included in the details of the Assisted Dying Bill, published for the first time yesterday. The legal document would be counter-signed by a witness and two doctors before someone would be given the drugs to end their own life.
L'association pour le droit de mourir dans la dignité (ADMD), qui a déjà fait parler d'elle au début du mois de mars avec sa campagne de sensibilisation à l'euthanasie, a réuni entre 1 000 et 2 000 personnes, samedi 24 mars, sur la place de la République. Un rassemblement suivi d'une marche jusqu'au Cirque d'hiver où s'est organisé un meeting en présence notamment du maire socialiste de Paris, Bertrand Delanoë. Si l'association s'était contentée, il y a moins d'un mois, de photo-montages des candidats dans des lits d'hôpital, elle les a aujourd'hui appelés à venir s'exprimer publiquement sur la question de l'euthanasie.
There would be "an almighty parliamentary row" if laws on assisted suicide were re-examined, Conservative MP Mark Pritchard has said. The former secretary of the 1922 committee of backbenchers said Tory MPs would "not accept reform lying down".
Terminally ill people seeking help to die should be allowed to obtain assistance in the UK, a newly-promoted health minister has said. Anna Soubry told the Times it was "ridiculous and appalling" that Britons had to "go abroad to end their life".
MONTPELIER. Vt. -- The Vermont House voted Monday night to give the last vote of approval to a bill that would make the state the first to legalize physician-aided suicide by legislation. With a 75-65 vote, the bill goes to Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, who supports the measure and is expected to sign it into law. "It's an important step of terminally ill Vermont patients," said Dick Walters of Shelburne, Vt., president of Patient Choices Vermont. Walters has worked for the legislation for 10 years.
Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill [HL Bill 24] is the fourth of its kind to come before the House of Lords in the last ten years. None of its predecessors has made progress and the last one (Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill) was rejected in May 2006. This latest bill is little different from Lord Joffe's - it seeks to license doctors to supply lethal drugs to terminally ill patients to enable them to end their lives. The bill contains no safeguards, beyond stating eligibility criteria, to govern the assessment of requests for assisted suicide. It relegates important questions such as how mental capacity and clear and settled intent are to be established to codes of practice to be drawn up after an assisted suicide law has been approved by Parliament. This is wholly inadequate for a bill, such as this, with life-or-death consequences. Parliament cannot responsibly be asked to approve such a radical piece of legislation without seeing the nature of the safegua...