Margo MacDonald to resume assisted suicide fight at Holyrood, defeated 86-16, she still wants a legacy at the expense of the vulnerable

Dear All

One of the unfortunate things which happened at the Holyrood election was Margo MacDonald was re-elected on the Edinburgh list.

This means she will try again to make assisted suicide legal in Scotland.

As part of her bizarre rantings, she is claiming she has a mandate to introduce the legislation at Holyrood.

If she was so sure that the public would return a mandate why did she stand first past the post?

The answer is simple, the public would have canned her ass; she needed the whole city to muster enough votes to get her returned.

I don’t consider she has a mandate at all.

People vote for many different reasons for a particular candidate.

Persoanlly, I would like to see her and her state sanction killing bill out in the street, this bill is all about her wanting a legacy.

But Holyrood shouldn’t give it to her over the bodies of the dead.

She says her bill would have safeguards, and we have seen in the past that in some bills the safeguards can simply be ignored.

The Lothians MSP, whose End of Life Assistance Bill was previously defeated in the Scottish Parliament last December, and rightly so.

However she claims she was elected with a clear intention to change the law.

Bull shit.

She said:

“Because the Swiss have open minds and big hearts, politicians here are dodging the dilemma posed by the small number of people for whom palliative care and drug therapy do not afford the peaceful death which all of us seek.”

MacDonald says that she will re-introduce a Bill and it will be the clear duty of the Scottish Parliament to again vote this down.

Politics is all about helping people in difficult circumstances but her bill isn’t the way forward.

It is morally bankrupt.

If Margo MacDonald believes she has a mandate from the people, she can test that at the Westminster by-election for Inverclyde.

But I suspect MacDonald already knows what the public will decide, she will not get elected.

MacDonald also said regarding the bill:

“That is why I will try again to bring about, this time with a fresh mandate, a change in Scots law to unambiguously allow for a patient to seek and be given medical assistance to end their life before nature decrees.”

MacDonald failed to secure the necessary support last year, losing by 85-16 in a free vote.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church, part of the Care Not Killing alliance, which opposed Ms MacDonald’s Bill, said:

“The fact that the Scottish Parliament last year rejected the Assisted Suicide Bill was widely accepted as representing the settled will of the Scottish people and it’s difficult to imagine that public opinion could have shifted in such a short period of time. The vote showed Scottish public opinion is not in favour of euthanasia.”

He added:

“The Catholic Church absolutely opposes this on religious beliefs but it is also bad law and bad medicine. Doctors should not kill their patients.”

This is state sanction murder by agreement which should be opposed.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University