Terminally Ill Bill

My inbox is littered with emails from various organisations deeply concerned about MP Kim Leadbatter’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Private Member’s Bill, which seeks to introduce ‘assisted dying’. I do have sympathy for the terminally ill and those trapped inside painful, degenerating homes of flesh. Nevertheless, I would scarcely trust any government, especially any recent British one, with the right to end a life. Our beloved NHS already kills two hundred children each day; to kill off the infirm and dying would be another victory for our national Death Cult. The only time the state may take life outside of wartime is a measured retribution for capital crime, but that right has been discarded since the 1960s. Instead, we execute the innocent and the vulnerable, and Ms Leadbetter would have us extend that franchise.

Much as I support moves to oppose this Bill, there are some politics to consider. I believe the Bill is a mere stalking horse and is designed, and therefore likely, to fail. It is clear that the Prime Minister is fully behind the concept, even though it never featured in Labour’s 2024 manifesto. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, has come out against the Bill, and even instructed his civil servants to estimate the additional costs and adverse effect on current healthcare commitments. Sir Keir publicly slapped him down, saying that ministers should remain neutral, which is curious.

So this is what I think will happen (and so too one of the attendees at my Study Week who first suggested it):

The Bill will fail, but it will receive widespread support in Parliament from MPs and Peers. As Ms Leadbetter has not the benefit of departmental civil servants, it will be poorly drafted and have a few glaring errors which no right-minded legislature (even ours) could entertain. The Government will therefore announce that it will introduce its own legislation, better worded than the last, and with a couple more safeguarding provisions to assuage the arguments of pro-life opponents. And it will pass. This will be the thing to oppose, not Leadbetter’s clumsy mare.

I might be wrong, of course. The Bill might pass, or it might fail and the Government ignore the matter thereafter, citing bigger fish to fry. Yet our post-Christian culture, which esteems personal choice and freedom so highly, is showing its increasing lack of regard for God’s great gift of life. Having dedicated so many children to the altar of Molech, why not offer other economically inactive folk, too?