Nicola Sturgeon has said she is “veering against” a Holyrood Bill to legalise assisted dying in Scotland, warning that it could be the “thin end of the wedge”.
Dame Esther Rantzen has praised “historic” legislation at Holyrood to legalise assisted dying, as a poll showed the change is backed by more than three-quarters of Scots.
A draft assisted-dying bill that would change the law so that doctors and other medical professionals could help terminally ill people die without fear of prosecution was introduced to the Scottish Parliament.
Scotland could become the first part of the UK to allow the terminally ill to seek assistance to end their lives after legislation was tabled at Holyrood.
The introduction in the Scottish Parliament of a Bill to authorise medically assisted suicide has turbocharged a debate that has been going on for centuries. Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca described suicide as the last defence of the free man against intolerable suffering at the end of life. “It makes a great deal of difference,” he wrote, “whether a man is lengthening his life or only his death…”