Member

This amendment seeks to place in the Bill a duty to consider these more insidious forms of intervention that can have lethal consequences and that compromise one of the core justifications for the Bill: autonomy. A patient being encouraged in a way that shapes a decision against their instincts corrupts the notion of a decision freely made. Protecting autonomy should unite all of us here, supporters and opponents of the Bill. The central purpose of the eligibility criteria and the whole process from the first declaration is to ensure that the patient is acting autonomously and has not been coerced or pressurised by any other person into making the decision to request assistance in their own death.