Join the Campaign

“I personally find myself particularly concerned and fundamentally concerned about the difficulty I think would always and inevitably be present in determining that someone choosing to end their life had not been subjected to undue influence.”

Nicola Sturgeon

when Health Secretary and Deputy First Minister in 2010

“To pass a law that says that those who are suffering should be entitled to assistance to kill themselves suggests that the Parliament believes that some lives are worth less than others.”

“…The question that we have to ask is: have we really become a society that says that the best answer that we can provide and the best that we can do for those in suffering in end-of-life situations is to help them to kill themselves? Is that really the best that we can offer? That sounds to me to be a desperately cold and soulless society, and I think that, in Scotland today, we are better than that”

Murdo Fraser MSP

in his speech during the Stage 1 debate on the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill in 2015

“I believe we should support people to live and I am therefore in favour of good quality palliative care. There also remains a major stumbling block to assisted suicide: How could you have sufficient safeguards?”

Nicola Sturgeon

when First Minister in 2015 in the Scottish Catholic Observer

“I come to this debate as a liberal and as a humanist. As a liberal, I seek always to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community. As a humanist, I try to resolve ethical issues through reason, reflection and empathy …”

“I do not accept that there is a right to die. Patrick Harvie has acknowledged that autonomy is not absolute—we are not entitled to exercise freedom that undermines or endangers the freedom of others. There is a reciprocal principle that operates; we need to have choice with responsibility.”

“…in vulnerable people’s minds, the right to die will become a duty to die. If we value the principles of equality and community as well as that of autonomy, it seems to me that the state must not sanction assisted suicide.”

“In elevating the status of individual autonomy, we reduce the status of those who are dependent. Allowing assisted suicide would, over time, change the way we view and treat the elderly, the disabled and the infirm.”

Alison McInness​

Former Liberal Democrat MSP for the North East of Scotland - in her speech during the Scottish Parliament’s Stage 1 debate on the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill in 2015.

“Few Canadian doctors foresaw that 'going neutral' would guarantee the arrival of euthanasia, or that promises of a shot in the arm for palliative care would be forgotten. Even fewer realised they would have no option but to cooperate with providing death on demand. It has become all too easy to end patients’ lives. Learn from our mistakes.”
Dr Will Johnston
Family Physician and Professor - Vancouver, Canada

BMJ 2019;364:l412

The number of suicides may also rise​

“It is often argued that the option of euthanasia will keep patients from attempting suicide… The opposite seems to be the case: the suicide rates in the Netherlands are the fastest growing when compared to surrounding European countries, most of which lack the option of euthanasia.”

Prof. Theo Boer

A former member of a Dutch regional euthanasia review committee.

Netherlands

Suicides increased by

20 %

between 2007 and 2016, whilst euthanasia deaths increased from1.3% of deaths in 2002 to 4.06% in 2016.

The suicide rates in most neighbouring countries are going down.

Washington State

The suicide rate increased by

20 %

in a ten year period from 2009 to 2019

Oregon

The suicide rate in 2019 was

HIGHER
20 %

than the US national average. The suicide rate in Oregon has increased by 33% between 2001 and 2019.

Montana

The suicide rate increased by

20 %

in a ten year period from 2009 to 2017.

 

Montana has the fourth highest suicide rate among all the US states.