Joint Statement on Assisted Dying Bills

Joint Statement on Assisted Dying Bills from the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul and Daughters of Charity Services

The coming week sees two key dates for significant legislation in both Scotland and England.

On 13 May, MSPs in Holyrood will vote on the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, which is currently at Stage 1.

Meanwhile, on 16 May, MPs in the House of Commons will vote on the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bill, as it has its third reading in the House.

Both the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul and Daughters of Charity Services express our firm opposition to both of these Bills.

We believe in the innate dignity of every human person, and that our duty of care to those in need extends throughout their life. We believe that when people are at their most vulnerable, we as a society have an obligation to treat them with loving, dignified care, rather than to create a system which may put pressure on vulnerable people to seek to prematurely end their lives.

Building on our Searching for Consensus report on the state of social care in England last year, we continue to call for greater investment in the care sector. We believe that greater investment in holistic and dignified palliative care would be a much more appropriate response to the suffering of people with a terminal illness than the proposed legislation.

We believe that the proposed legislation risks opening the door to a system in which vulnerable people could be encouraged to end their own lives; to be designated as a burden rather than as a suffering person in need of loving accompaniment. From the experience of countries where such legislation has already been implemented, we have seen the safeguards discussed around this legislation gradually weakened, and we can expect to see a similar pattern take place here if this legislation is passed.

If we accept the innate dignity of every human life, it is clear that our responsibility must be to extend our love, compassion and support to ease the suffering of those at their most vulnerable, and to accompany them on this journey, rather than encouraging people to choose to die. As such, we must oppose these Bills.

Contact Your Representative

We would encourage all of our supporters, and all those who share our values, to write to their local MP, and where appropriate their local MSP, expressing their concern over the issues raised in these Bills, and their opposition to them.

If you have not contacted your representative before, you can find their contact details for Westminster here:

https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP

And for Holyrood, here:

https://www.parliament.scot/msps

Further Information

The Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales have produced useful guidance on this issue, which can be found at:

https://www.cbcew.org.uk/opposing-assisted-suicide/

The Bishops Conference of Scotland has published its response to the consultation on the Bill, which can be found at:

https://rcpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/McArthur-Consultation-BCOS-Response.pdf

Further information on the work of our organisations can be found at:

https://www.daughtersofcharity.net/

https://www.dcsvpservices.org/