WE note with interest your report of Rev Dr Donald McDonald's view on behalf of the Free Church regarding the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill ("Free Church describes assisted suicide proposals 'completely unacceptable'", The Herald, June 3).
It is highly unlikely that any healthy 16-year-old would make a preliminary declaration that they would wish to avail themselves of assisted suicide if they subsequently develop an intolerable terminal or life threatening illness.
However, to exclude them from doing so if they do suffer from such a disease would be discriminatory. Scotland is justly proud of its record in granting autonomy to competent teenagers.
The bill makes it very clear that assisted suicide can only be utilised by competent, mentally well patients; the preliminary declaration has to be witnessed by two independent individuals and is designed to ensure there is no evidence of coercion of the vulnerable.
There subsequently has to be a total of four medical consultations that agree that it is a reasonable action to be taken. This is therefore not death on demand as suggested by Rev McDonald.
As the Bill specifies the request for assisted suicide has to come from the requestor and be instigated by them, it in fact offers protection to the lives of chronically ill and elderly infirm people.
Reports from Oregon and the Netherlands from 1990 to 2006 were analysed extensively and clearly demonstrate that there is no excess use of assisted suicide /death with dignity in vulnerable groups.
Your readers may be interested to know that there were no requests in the Netherlands from teenagers in the first six years that such a request was legal.
Gillian McDougall,
Secretary, Doctors for Assisted Suicide,
2 Walker Street,
Edinburgh.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article