Background

Second reading passed

Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill passed second reading on 29 November 2024 by 330–275.  A majority of 55.

The bill has been committed to a public bill committee – a group of MPs, yet to be selected, who will go through the bill line-by-line, scrutinising each clause and proposing amendments.

It is likely that consideration of the bill will continue into Spring 2025. The earliest possible date for report stage is Friday 25 April and so there is little incentive for the committee to complete before then.

Letter to the Tablet

1 December 2024

Dear Editor,

In the wake of the vote in favour of assisted killing our hearts are broken.

Made in an abbreviated time frame without careful preparation or long-term scrutiny, it shocks those who hold the belief that we live in a Christian country.

When we abandon our sense of God as creator we accept abortion as a ‘right.’

Now, incomprehensibly, from birth to assisted killing, the circle is completed.

In 1981 I heard a talk given by Saint Mother Teresa. Prophetically she said ‘When a mother can kill her child in the womb, all that remains is for us to kill ourselves’.

On Friday we arrived there and the darkness enfolds us with unimaginable consequences.

Carmel Martin

(Unpublished.  See also her article in 1986 in the Catholic Herald.)