[Editor’s Note: For a copy of this release in pdf format, including an attached copy of John Kelly’s letter to the House of Lords in Word format, please go to the PRWeb version here.]
Not Dead Yet USA today announced an advocacy and outreach effort to the British House of Lords, which is to debate an assisted suicide bill, HL 6, in Parliament on Friday, July 18. In addition to blogging and Twitter support, the group released an open letter to the House of Lords by Northeastern regional director, John Kelly.
“Over the past year, we have beaten back Oregon-style assisted suicide bills throughout the Northeast,” said John Kelly, “I wanted to share that experience with the House of Lords.”
“Bill 6, like the American bills, draws on shoddy science to create reckless public health policy,” wrote Kelly in the letter. The letter summarized the disability rights arguments against assisted suicide, with a list of problems including the impossibility of accurate diagnosis, the threat to depressed people, inevitable cost calculations, dangers for elderly people, and prejudice against disability.
Kelly wrote, “What we disabled people see in legalizing assisted suicide is that some people get suicide prevention, while others get suicide assistance, based on value judgments and prejudice.”
“We are joining our sister group Not Dead Yet UK and other advocates against this bill, which leaves vulnerable people unprotected,” said Not Dead Yet USA president Diane Coleman. Not Dead Yet UK plans to hold a rally on Friday at the House of Lords to voice opposition to the bill.
Not Dead Yet USA’s research analyst Stephen Drake blogged about UK proponents’ strategy of avoiding comparisons with the European countries with legalized euthanasia, such as Belgium, which has allowed euthanasia based on disability and has made children eligible as well.
“Instead,“ Drake wrote, “UK assisted suicide advocates have taken to pointing to the United States as a shining example of how assisted suicide can be contained and safeguarded.”
“People tend to forget that slippery slopes don’t just happen,” Drake said. “Incrementalist strategies – taking planned steps toward a desired result – are commonly called ‘slippery slopes,’ but they are really political advocacy working for partial victories toward a final policy goal.”
Bill HL 6 will either be defeated during the debate or, more likely, referred to a committee for more investigation.
Transcript of entire debate on uk assisted dying bill is at http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/lords/todays-lords-debates/read/unknown/7/
We also had a nudge unit working…which was still spewing out automated ‘letters to your leaders’…6 hours after the debate was over! http://www.yesuntiltheend.co.uk/ If you read the transcript, youll appreciate that several of our upper chamber who are not au fait with IT , thought there was a mass public call for assisted suicide, when in fact it was groups from all over the world getting a say on OUR LAW!
Rather offensively, it was using the hashtag #untiltheend on twitter…. a la Matthew 28: 20 …” And remember, I am with you each and every day until the end of the age.” ..in much the same way Dutch minister Els Borst deliberately used the last words of jesus on the cross after a 2001 interview in which she had said “It has been done” (Dutch: “Het is volbracht”) on completing the law on euthanasia. The orthodox Protestant parties ChristianUnion (ChristenUnie or CU) and Reformed Political Party (SGP), who had opposed euthanasia were insulted and she was forced to apologise in parliament.