Earlier this summer, the House of Commons narrowly endorsed the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. The ensuing debate in the House of Lords, however, was both lopsided and fierce. Two days of impassioned speeches saw the lords oppose the measure by a two-to-one ratio. The surprisingly contested debate over the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in Parliament’s Upper Chamber keeps hope alive.
The Lords, it seems, are awake to the great menace of assisted suicide, a menace unleashed in Westminster this summer when the House of Commons approved euthanasia after decades of hitherto failed attempts.
Alas, the Lords are now the last line of defense against assisted suicide, and this cold, hard fact did not seem lost on them.
We all have a stake in their cause and their courage.
“When a nation adopts assisted suicide, it is as a neat procedure to tidy up some sad, messy cases,” Dan Hitchens recently wrote. “Later on they discover it is not a procedure but a living thing, a sea-monster devouring the shipwrecked — the disabled, the mentally ill, the guilt-ridden, the poor.”
Such were arguments from the floor of the House of Lords last week.
Baroness Claire Regina Fox tweeted her own speech and said her hands were trembling as she spoke: “Our task is formidable because of how many norms the bill will overturn…The bill unsettles century old medical ethics. It rebrands assisting someone to die as a medical treatment.”
👀MUST WATCH! In a tour de force, Baroness Fox (@Fox_Claire) laments “how many norms the Bill will overturn”.
Legalising assisted suicide will overturn our understanding of medical ethics and “shakes the foundations of society’s attitude to suicide”. Peers must not proceed. pic.twitter.com/NwB7DPJGG3
— Right To Life UK (@RightToLifeUK) September 19, 2025
Credit: @RightToLifeUK/X.com
But she went on to note, the proposal also rebrands our understanding of suicide by giving it state sanction and labeling it “compassionate.” Up to now, we have always tried to restrain the man or woman in despair on the bridge with all our might: “All this reflects our deep humanistic intention that when a person acts to end their life it should be resisted with all the energy we can muster.”
“But what happens,” she asked, “when the state shouts, ‘Jump’?”
Some, like Baroness Victoria Prentis, spoke from a personal place. She tearfully recalled her parents’ “good deaths” in the peace of palliative care. Baroness Prentis also announced her own cancer diagnosis and her fear of becoming a “burden” to her family, even with all the support and comforts she enjoys. What pressures will all those without such support experience in a world of government-sanctioned assisted suicide?
“I watched that final debate in the Commons,” she said, “and what struck me was that woman after woman, ethnic minority after ethnic minority, disabled people stood up and said, ‘[T]his bill is not good enough for my vulnerable community.’”
Others spoke from a professional point of view. Baroness Sheila Hollins, for example, cited her 40-year career at the NHS as a general practitioner and psychiatrist. “Hospices should be our pride and joy, we are world leaders in palliative care,” she said. Yet, the “evidence from the association of palliative care shows slows in countries with assisted dying services.”
One lord was so passionate in his opposition to the proposal that he delivered his speech from his home, where he was recovering from a serious accident. Lord David Alton labelled the legislation a “bill of death” and said that the practice, while heinous, is “not a new one.”
📺MUST SEE: Much-loved peer @DavidAltonHL is unable to speak at Second Reading of the assisted suicide Bill in the House of Lords after sustaining spinal injuries in a bus crash.
Watch the speech he would have given: a passionate plea to reject the Bill & protect the vulnerable. pic.twitter.com/5LJfb94R3H
— Right To Life UK (@RightToLifeUK) September 18, 2025
Credit: @RightToLifeUK/X.com
“Euthanasia of the weak was practiced in the ancient world but was rejected as we became more civilized and recognized the equal and inherent worth of every person.” It reemerged in the 20th century with the advent of eugenics. Alton warned of the movement’s “pattern of creeping incrementalism” that threatens to ensnare everyone from infants to anorexics to diabetics.
Sad to say, he’s right.
We need not resort to dystopian fantasies of what would happen in states where suicide is legally sanctioned for some — or even for all. We need only look to Canada. As reported in The Atlantic last month, it’s now a world leader in euthanasia. Assisted suicide accounts for one in 20 Canadian deaths and is available to ever more categories of people. In fact, it will be available to the mentally ill beginning in two years, and the Canadian parliament has recommended it for children.
In parts of Europe, the mentally-ill and children are already eligible for state-sanctioned assisted suicide. It isn’t just a slippery slope; a death march seems to be sweeping across parts of the West.
Get 40% off new DailyWire+ annual memberships with code FALL40 at checkout!
The House of Lords has the power to prevent Parliament from enacting what one of its members called a “legislative embodiment of a suicide influencer.” They’re defending all of us – and especially the most vulnerable – in fighting this battle.
In an earlier battle for the survival of Western civilization, one of Westminster’s most famous alumni, Winston Churchill, once said, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.”
* * *
Ashley McGuire is a senior fellow at The Catholic Association.
Leigh Fitzpatrick Snead is a fellow at The Catholic Association.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
