CROWDFUNDER: Assisted Death law races ahead. We work to defend against its harms.
The fight continues. Help us continue our work defending women from assisted death harms as the Westminster bill moves to the Lords, and Scotland considers new law.
Everything we’ve done so far has been funded by you. Now The Other Half takes the fight to the next stage — to the Lords and beyond — to ensure women’s lives are not silently and unjustly ended.
We raised the voices of those furthest from power.
When Canada legalised assisted death, feminist organisations stayed silent. Not here. Fiona Mackenzie MBE and Chelsea Roff were strangers who came to the same conclusion: the UK bills posed dangerous, unexplored risks, especially to women. Our research showed mercy killings were in fact violent domestic homicides of women by men: not the siren call for assisted deaths. We explored the risk that the British state becomes the biggest killer of women in domestically abusive relationships, and the dark and forgotten history of the euthanasia movement. We exposed the horror of doctors who give lethal drugs to women with eating disorders. Global experts told us about the bleak reality how assisted dying policies are unfolding abroad on our podcast ASSISTED: Death and Women.
Our research featured in the The Times, New Statesman, Politics Home, The Telegraph, Invisible Women, LBC, The Telegraph, The Scottish Sun, The Mail 1 /2/3
Our podcast ASSISTED made millions of impressions across social media: our episode with domestic homicide expert Prof Jane Monckton Smith made it to The Times, The New Statesman, The Spectator, and the Terminally Ill Adults Bill Committee in parliament.
We spoke in Parliament, and urged MPs to amend the bill to ensure women do not become collateral damage.
What must we do next
Our view is that the Westminster bill is a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation. But if it does become law, we must work to minimise the damage and prevent wrongful deaths.
This time it’s the Lords, not the Private Members Bill’s Sponsor Kim Leadbeater, who will determine its fate. If this bill cannot be made safe, the Lords should vote it down.
We’ll propose amendments aimed at preventing lethal errors: protections to ensure women with anorexia cannot receive assisted death, as already happens in other jurisdictions. Bans on dual euthanasia to stop one partner coercing the other into death. Additional protections for those who are recently bereaved: including widows and grieving mothers, who are consistently over-represented in assisted deaths abroad. And that’s just for starters. In Scotland, an even riskier bill is expected to return to Holyrood later this year. We’ll push to win the argument that these bills are designed to kill: that extraordinary purpose needs extraordinary scrutiny.
What do we need
We’re a minnow. We’re raising £17,000: just 0.1% of what the main Westminster lobby group has spent pushing to legalise assisted death over the past decade.
Help us raise the voices of those who have been silenced. Please DONATE today:
Our Work on Assisted Death
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ACTION: Write to your MP on the Assisted Dying proposals
This bill will change all of us. It takes 1 minute.
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POLLING: British public overwhelmingly concerned about domestic abuse victims being coerced into assisted death
69% of 2,091 adults say they are concerned that lawful assisted death can result in terrible outcomes: and we warn MPs that hundreds of victims to die each year
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PODCAST: Assisted Death and Women
We hear from the experts from here and abroad on the ways that women will be most affected.
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REPORT: Safeguarding Women in Assisted Dying
Parliament is now debating assisted suicide for the terminally ill. This report looks at ‘assisted’ deaths here and abroad, to highlight the unacceptable risk that women are coerced into state death.
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EVIDENCE: 1400 Victims
Our written evidence for the Assisted Dying bill committee at Westminster. We estimate 1400 domestic abuse victims will die by assisted suicide each year, presenting profound challenges for our society.