Health Minister delays debate on Assisted Dying.

Health Minister Karen Wilson announced on Monday that the debate on the proposed new law has been postponed and will now take place in the 3rd quarter of 2024 rather than in February as originally planned.

Both us and Our Duty of Care Jersey have welcomed this move, and as quoted in today’s Jersey Evening Post, we wonder if this decision has been influenced by the fact that following a series of meetings that the Health Minister is only now truly recognising the scale and implications of the topic.

Conversely supporters to a change in the law including the Chairman of End of Life Care, Michael Tailboard vented their frustration in an aggressive manner, He was quoted as saying, “…it seems to me that she (Karen Wilson) lacks the courage and competence needed to do her job”. - This stance didn’t go unnoticed by impartial observers.

Andy Sibcy (editor of the JEP) responded to this in his daily column by saying, “It is hard to see how ensuring that high quality information is secured to inform States Members and to give them sufficient time to consider the information constitutes a failure of courage on the Minister’s part”.

We had earlier argued the point that the 21 newly elected States Members who weren’t involved in the ‘in principle’ vote should be given time to properly understand the complexities of introducing assisted suicide and euthanasia into healthcare.

Since the vote in principle in favour of AD in November 2021, there have been significant amounts of new information of the growing harmful effects of introducing this into law, especially in Canada which legalised Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) by euthanasia and assisted suicide in 2016. They have seen a continual erosion of the so-called safeguards that were initially set in place. This is especially relevant to Jersey as the proposals closely mirror the Canadian 2 tracks or routes, for terminal and non-terminal illnesses.

We have always maintained our concern and stance on the topic of a change in law, as when taking such decisions the politicians involved must give due consideration to those most vulnerable in society, to the lowest common denominator, and we don’t believe that this was the case when the ‘in principle’ vote was taken by the last government.

A link to the full JEP report is here - https://bit.ly/48Kan2r