Margo's law on assisted dying must not be swept under a Holyrood carpet (Right to die movement pins hopes on disabled Parkinson's sufferer, News and Suicide is probably the most fundamental of human rights, Comment, May 31).

MSPs who voted against the bill conveniently ignore those Scots who are suffering from terminal illness or disease.

Many Scots are being tortured for years by politicians who refuse to recognise the prolonged pain of those who suffer all the long way to their final dying breath. Those who can afford to pay travel and expenses to Switzerland can legally thwart the laws of Scotland to die peacefully and painlessly on foreign soil. This absurd and divisive anomaly makes nonsense of independence for Scotland. All the powers we demand for Scotland are also held in a foreign land: England. We want to own all those powers, but we will export the power over assisted dying to Switzerland if the supplicant can afford the expense.

Alexander Walker

Glasgow

There is a time to live and a time to die. As a Christian I believe God decides when those times are. So the extension of a life artificially or the premature ending of one is wrong. Let's resist the culture of death which threatens to pervade Scotland and take a biblical view instead. This entails seeing death as an enemy and rejecting practices like abortion on demand. It means promoting marriage and sex education which values life. It requires us to invest in palliative care rather than weapons of mass destruction. A biblical approach encourages us to embrace life as a gift and, when given the choice between life and death, to choose life. My own grandfather's illness and death from MND was devastating but the love of his family saw him through. Extending the amazing palliative care available to some in Scotland, thereby removing the fear of death and suffering for vulnerable souls, is the way forward.

D Yost

Lauder

The Scottish Parliament's decision has failed to realise it is cruel and makes no financial sense paying benefits for many years to those who would rather choose an immediate and dignified voluntary assisted suicide. Far preferable for many than becoming progressively more disabled while trying to cope with general and fuel poverty. And as many will now seek to obtain the life-ending medication via the internet they run the risk of being criminalised and supplied with fake or dangerously impure medication.

Colin Campbell

Inverness

Ian Bell's columns are often incisive, informative and judicious but I beg to differ from his assertion that assisted suicide is perhaps the most fundamental of human rights. It must surely be uncontested that the most fundamental of rights is that to life. Assisted suicide may be high on the agenda at present but our society will ultimately be judged not by those it allows to die, but those it allows to live.

Dr Callum Henderson

Kilsyth