by Margaret Kearns

Independent MSP Margo MacDonald has launched a bid to introduce a change of law legalising assisted suicide in Scotland. MacDonald, herself a sufferer of Parkinson’s Disease, will announce on Monday her plans for consultation, with a view to bringing the legislation before Parliament next year. The consultation paper will require the backing of at least 18 MSP’s and will attempt to include a patients right to end their life under the terms of palliative care.

Mrs MacDonald is a staunch supporter of assisted suicide for terminally ill patients and said “I’m doing this, not has an individual who suffers from a degenerative condition but as a legislator, a law maker, who has the privilege of being able to represent people and make things the way people would like things to be.” Her proposal will include plans to provide “physician-assisted suicide” within the structure of the NHS.

Protest at the proposed change will be expected from many representational bodies for religious groups and medical staff. Head of the Roman Catholic church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien has spoken out against euthanasia and any proposal to alter it’s illegality “If God gives us that gift, (of life) He can take that from us but we’re not taking it from Him and as it were saying, ‘well God, I’m finished with life because I can’t cope with cancer or Parkinson’s or whatever it has to be’. We just wait on God calling us to himself.”

Members of the legal profession are also damning the plan as they feel it is in direct violation of the Hippocratic oath and the motivation of the medical profession as a whole. A spokesman for the British Medical Association in Scotland, Dr. George Fernie has also said “We are a caring profession, we don’t want people not to be reassured that the profession are there doing their best for them, not to worry about the motives of that doctor”

Assisted suicide hit the headlines this weekend when it was revealed that a 90 tear old Londoner, only known as ‘Chris’ died on Friday at euthanasia clinic “Ex-International” in Switzerland. The man, who was not terminally ill, decided to end his life after deteriorating health had reduced it’s quality. 

It is not yet known whether the Mrs MacDonald’s plan will go into consultation, needing the approved support of fellow MSP’s, nor has it been clarified whether the legislation will provide for ‘passive’ or ‘active’ euthanasia. Active euthanasia would place responsibility on the physician to administer a lethal drug, passive defines the act as the deprivation of those things necessary to sustain the life of a patient.