LEICESTER, United Kingdom – As members of the UK parliament continue to speak about a proposed law to legalize assisted suicide, the bill’s opponents are criticizing proposed changes as “window dressing” that will significantly weaken already inadequate ‘protections’ – before the bill even passes.

As the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill makes its way through the Committee Stage in parliament, the sponsor Member of Parliament (MP), Kim Leadbeater, has asked for a series of amendments concerning the role of doctors and the reporting of assisted suicides. Additionally, the necessary approval of a judge is also being proposed to be required.

A palliative care doctor, Rachel Clarke, told MPs about the potentially coercive nature of doctors even mentioning assisted suicide to a patient.

“If, for instance, you say to a vulnerable patient who has just been told they have a diagnosis of terminal cancer, ‘Have you thought about assisted dying?’ I would suggest that stating it broadly like that is a form of pressure and that you are potentially unintentionally coercing that patient. The very act of raising assisted dying in that way will make that vulnerable patient think, ‘God, is this doctor telling me that my life is not worth living any more?’ Clarke said.

“It is my clinical experience that not only are the majority of doctors not necessarily trained in spotting coercion explicitly, but they are often not trained explicitly in having so-called advance care planning conversations with patients around the topic of death and dying, and how a patient would like the end of their life to proceed,” she said.

Members of the palliative medical care field have been strongly opposed to the Bill, noting that the proper care for dying patients is often not given, that funding of palliative medicine is inadequate, and that many medical facilities can’t even give 24 hours of care each day.

Leadbeater has also introduced an amendment that would require the coordinating doctor in an assisted suicide to undergo training that would include assessing capacity and coercion.

The spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said Leadbeater’s amendments appear to be “little more than window dressing.”

“She has steadfastly refused to introduce safeguards to prevent doctors from introducing the topic of assisted suicide with their patients unprompted in direct contradiction to advice from experts who warned her about how this could be potentially coercive,” she said.

“Leadbeater’s Bill is dangerous and fundamentally flawed. A few completely inadequate tweaks will not change that. It is almost certain that the safeguards will not protect everyone who does not really wish to die or who has been pressured into assisted suicide. MPs must reject it at Third Reading,” Robinson added.

The Head of Policy for Disability Rights UK, Fazilet Hadi told the commission equality journey for disabled people is relatively recent in Britain.

“The Disability Discrimination Act was only passed in 1995, and the Equality Act was only 15 years ago. We are a country that is unequal—that has internalized ableism against disabled people—so I do think the Bill will have a serious and profound negative impact against the valuing of disabled people’s lives,” Hadi said.

A spokesperson for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said the proposed changes to the Bill is an act of “shameless U-turn.”

“Now we are seeing the true ideological motivations behind the Leadbeater Bill, which will put vulnerable people at the mercy of so-called ‘experts’: That is to say, true believers who advocate death as a solution to ‘problem’ patients,” the spokesperson said.

Doctors from the United States – where several states have legalized assisted suicide – spoke to the UK committee, which one doctor even claiming it should be a “felony” for loved ones to “interfere with a patient’s right to make this choice.”

“Judging by the American doctors who testified before the committee, this expert panel would be nothing more than a rigged jury that is no safeguard at all against pro-death believers who’d criminalize family members for persuading their loved ones not to die,” the SPUC person said.

“This dangerous and immoral Bill must be rejected for the sake of all citizens. We are all potentially threatened by this radical proposal that would remove the final barrier between the patient and the doctor seeking to put them into an early grave,” the spokesperson continued.

“The goalposts have been moved, and it’s proposals like this that show that the government and some MPs cannot be trusted with assisted suicide laws. Once legalized, there is no knowing where this rapid slide towards death will end,” the SPUC person added.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, President of the England and Wales Catholic Bishops’ Conference and Archbishop of Westminster, last week told News UK the debate over the assisted suicide bill was “deeply irresponsible.”

“I think what’s happening, if it came to pass, would be the biggest change that this country has seen for many, many decades at least, probably more. On the back of what – five, six, seven hours’ debate? I was told that the fox hunting bill [in 2004] endured 700 hours of debate,” he said.

“Once assisted suicide is approved by the law, a key protection of human life falls away. Pressure mounts on those who are nearing death, from others or even from themselves, to end their life in order to take away a perceived burden of care from their family, for the avoidance of pain, or for the sake of an inheritance,” Nichols added.

“The radical change in the law now being proposed risks bringing about for all medical professionals a slow change from a duty to care to a duty to kill,” the cardinal said.

Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome