A British pro-life group is condemning report by Lord Falconer’s self-styled commission on assisted suicide. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) says the report, “funded by pro-death activists and due to be published in full tomorrow, amounts to a renewed attack on the legal status of disabled and elderly people.”
The report’s conclusions were summarized earlier this week by Lord Falconer in the Telegraph newspaper.
The commission has been widely discredited as stacked with supporters of assisted suicide, SPUC says. Over 40 organisations, including the British Medical Association (BMA), refused to give evidence to Lord Falconer’s “death-for-the-disabled” group.
Paul Tully, SPUC Pro-Life’s general secretary, told the media earlier today:
“Predictably, Lord Falconer’s report calls for Parliament to change the law to allow assisted suicide. His group was set up following Parliament’s repeated rejections of attempts by Lord Falconer and his ilk to change the law. This is part of a thoroughly nasty strategy to convince the public that many disabled people want to die – and that they are sensible to want to die. Lord Falconer’s cooking-up of a dodgy dossier via a stacked panel shows the lengths to which the assisted suicide lobby will go. They seek to create a two-tier system: people who deserve a right to life, and those who maybe don’t. In fact, this shabby exercise was bankrolled by Sir Terry Pratchett, a patron of Dignity in Dying, formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.
Disabled people are justifiably frightened when the protection the law gives them against pressure to end their lives is attacked like this. The moves to undermine their right to life are often accentuated by fawning, uncritical media coverage. The assisted suicide lobby represents a mentality of aversion to people who suffer, and it represents celebrities who have more money than sensitivity. We encourage people to show solidarity with disabled people by dismissing out-of-hand Lord Falconer’s thinly-disguised propaganda.”
SPUC Pro-Life has played a leading role in resisting the assisted suicide movement in the courts.
