Families could face arrest over ‘vague’ suicide law
PLANS to legalise assisted suicide are too vague and could leave accomplices open to prosecution, police and legal experts warned yesterday.
There is a “fine line” between helping someone with a terminal illness kill themselves and an act of euthanasia which could result in criminal charges, MSPs heard.
The Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill is being studied by Holyrood’s health committee, as part of a second bid to push it through.
It previously failed when it was championed by the late independent MSP Margo MacDonald.
She campaigned for a change in the law after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1996.
When she died in April last year, Greens MSP Patrick Harvie took the bill on.
Polls show two-thirds of Scots support a law change but the medical profession is deeply split over the move.
It would give those whose lives have become intolerable through a progressive degenerative condition or terminal illness the right to seek the help of a doctor to help end their lives.
The line between assisting someone and taking the act out of that persons hands is a fine one
The Bill says the final act must be carried out by the person seeking to end their own life. But Professor Alison Britton, of the Law Society of Scotland, said a definition of assisting suicide was needed, especially in cases where someone had become too ill to end their life.
She told MSPs: “We need to be very clear what actually this assistance encompasses, and we need to be also clear at what point is there a demarcation where assistance is being given and that actually crosses over to being complicit in homicide.”
Prosecutor Stephen McGowan, representing the Crown Office, said: “The line between assisting someone and taking the act out of that persons hands is a fine one.
“The key part of this is, there is no definition of what assistance actually is and what it is to assist someone in suicide.”
Detective Chief Superintendent Gary Flannigan, of Police Scotland, added: “Any confusion is likely to lead to a police investigation, which I think most people would seek to avoid.”
