POLL:  Do you support assisted dying legislation? 

The Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill has been debated in the Scottish Parliament. Photo: Martyn Gorman

Twenty health professionals have united in opposition to the assisted dying bills, which are progressing through the legislative process.

Writing in The Shetland Times today, the group said they were “deeply concerned” by the plans to create legal access to suicide or euthanasia.

They are urging the public and politicians to think again.

The authors of the letter – GPs, consultants, surgeons, psychiatrists and more –  say the assisted dying service is unnecessary as requests to be helped to die are “extremely uncommon” and can almost always be resolved by addressing the person’s underlying distress.

Their second objection is that state-organised assisted dying would be unsafe – and could result in people seeking to end their lives out of concern they had become a “burden” on friends and family.

“These laws are dangerous, unnecessary and unsafe, and must be resisted before it is too late,” they wrote.

The letter comes after a bill by MP Kim Leadbeater clears its first hurdles in Westminster, while a similar bill by Orkney MSP Liam McArthur is making its way through the legislative process at Holyrood.

Mr McArthur said the current illegality of assisted dying in Scotland was “failing too many terminally ill Scots at the end of life”.

He stressed that any proposals would be safeguarded to ensure the process worked as intended.

Supporters say hundreds of terminally ill people choose to end their lives every year and the current law means they often do so in lonely and traumatic ways.

They believe change is necessary to provide people greater dignity in dying.

What do you think?

Pick up a copy of The Shetland Times to read the health professionals’ letter in full.