‘Assisted Dying’ Bill Second Reading
The second reading of the ‘Assisted Dying’ Bill is forthcoming on 22nd October 2021 in the House of Lords. The Bill seems to license doctors to enable terminally ill adult patients, under certain conditions, to end their own lives by the provision of lethal drugs (physician-assisted suicide).
Below we provide links to some articles and resources pertinent to this debate.
The Centre Director, Prof. David Albert Jones, gives eight significant reasons not to legalise physician assisted suicide in David Albert Jones, ‘Eight Reasons not to Legalise Physician Assisted Suicide’, 2015.
Other articles of interest:
• Helen Watt, ‘The Case Against Assisted Dying’
The Anscombe Bioethics Centre has also produced an annotated bibliography of resources, with links to articles, including some that are open access:
• David Albert Jones, ‘Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: A Guide to the Evidence’, 2015
Related Issues:
• Michael Wee, Coronavirus and the misuse of ‘do not resuscitate’ orders, The Spectator, 6 May 2020
• Luke Gormally, ‘Human Dignity and Respect for the Elderly’, 1998
• Anscombe Bioethics Centre, ‘The Ethics of Care of the Dying Person’, 2013
• David P. Sulmasy, ‘The Varieties of Human Dignity: A Logical and Conceptual Analysis’, 2012
• Dr Mark Komrad MD explains why psychiatrists should oppose euthanasia for their patients
• Dr Benoit Beuselinck draws attention to lessons to be learned from Belgium
Finally, see our resources section for the full complement of the Centre’s essays and articles on euthanasia.
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Sincerest Thanks for Your Support
Staff are grateful to all those who sustained the Centre in the past by their prayers and the generous financial support from trusts, organisations, communities and especially from individual donors, including the core funding that came through the Day for Life fund and so from the generosity of many thousands of parishioners. We would finally like to acknowledge the support the Centre has received from the Catholic community in Ireland, especially during the pandemic when second collections were not possible.
We would like to emphasise that, though the Centre is now closed, these donations have not been wasted but have helped educate and support generations of conscientious healthcare professionals, clerics, and lay people over almost 50 years. This support has also helped prevent repeated attempts to legalise euthanasia or assisted suicide in Britain and Ireland from 1993 till the end of the Centre’s work on 31 July 2025.