LONDON — There is mounting pressure to loosen Great Britain's stricture against assisted suicide. In an impassioned House of Lords debate June 6, 22 members spoke in favor of a bill that would legalize it and 25 members spoke against.

Even before the debate, Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow, a leading Catholic voice in the United Kingdom on bioethics issues, weighed in on the issue.

In a June 2 letter to members of the House of Lords, Archbishop Conti noted that assisted suicide as practiced in the Netherlands has paved the way to involuntary euthanasia and a lack of alternative care for the terminally ill. He also noted that the British Medical Association, Help the Aged and the Disability Rights Commission of the United Kingdom all opposed changes to the law.

“To permit assisted suicide is to overturn a long-settled conviction that as suicide is itself wrong — and until recently a criminal offense — assisting the act is nefarious,” he wrote. “It is also subversive of the implicit trust placed in the medical profession by patients.”

The Patient Assisted Dying Bill, sponsored by Lord Joel Joffe, would allow competent adults who suffer from a terminal disease or an incurable illness to request a doctor's assistance to die. Two doctors would have to confirm the diagnosis. Every alternative would have to be analyzed, including hospice or palliative care, and the patient would have a period to reflect after the request is made. The stated desire to die must be witnessed by a solicitor, who could confirm the patient's mental health, and a commission would monitor every assisted suicide.

For doctors opposed to euthanasia, there is a provision to opt out on grounds of conscience.

Joffe, a retired human-rights lawyer known for his defense of Nelson Mandela in the 1963 Rivonia trial, said the current law is defective because it results in “grievous, prolonged and unnecessary suffering to a significant number of patients, who are denied the right to remain in control of their lives.”

“It is ignored by many caring doctors who, moved by compassion, assist their patients to die, which results in grave risks to those doctors' careers,” Joffe continued. Those who assist a suicide face up to 14 years in prison.

Joffe tried to gain public sympathy for the cause by discussing the cases of two people who suffered from motor neuron disease — Diane Pretty and Reginald Crew.

But Dominica Roberts, president of the Pro-Life Party, the political arm of the United Kingdom's Pro-Life Alliance, said that as with abortion, “the very rare and very hard cases have received a lot of attention.” Motor neuron disease affects two people in every 100,000, she said, and most of those afflicted “continue to live and want to.”

In the Diane Pretty case, a woman wanted her husband to help her commit suicide. The courts of the United Kingdom and the European Union ruled against the request in 2001. Pretty died naturally in 2002. Crew took another route, flying to Switzerland in January for an assisted death at the clinic Dignitas in Zurich. According to Roberts, this same clinic helps people with schizophrenia commit suicide.

“The law prohibiting assisted suicide in the [United Kingdom] is fairly tight,” said Ronald Convery, spokesman for Archbishop Conti. “People ask for the right to die in the courts. It's usually fairly emotive. But no progression has been made. Any doctor would be prosecuted.”

The Voluntary Euthanasia Society of the United Kingdom was optimistic regarding the House of Lords debate.

“Some House members, previously against euthanasia, are now coming out in support,” said spokeswoman Tamara Langley.

Langley claimed that regulation is important because people commit assisted suicide no matter what the law says, and “there's no excuse for this to go on behind closed doors.”

For many years, the Netherlands tolerated assisted suicide. And then the practice became legal.

Less well known, Swiss law since 1942 has prohibited assisted suicide for “self-seeking” motives, and some “death with dignity” groups have been taking advantage of the law's wording to carry out “altruistic” assisted suicides.

Martin Foley, clerk to the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group at the House of Lords, charged that Joffe was being “used by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society to front for them.”

“After the Diane Pretty case lost,” Foley said, “[Voluntary Euthanasia Society] shifted emphasis from the courts to Parliament.”

Opposition to the bill includes a wide range of groups and individuals outside the usual pro-life associations such as the Royal College of Physicians, Disability Awareness in Action, Anglican archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the country's chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks.

And there is widespread disdain of euthanasia in the British medical community. According to leaders of the pro-life movement, three-fourths of the country's doctors said they would refuse to do it if it became legal. Many fear a change in the law would put undue pressure on the elderly and terminally ill.

According to Roberts of the Pro-Life Alliance, the bill is significant because it “implies that some people's lives are not worth living.”

The experience of euthanasia in Holland has also kept the United Kingdom's pro-life movement on guard. “We see in Holland the slippery slope, from voluntary to involuntary euthanasia, where it is practiced against patients' wishes,” Roberts said. “Last year in Holland, 3,000 patients were euthanized by doctors. One-third of these were done without any request. The slippery slope is inevitable.”

Since Tony Blair came to power, the government made it legal to withdraw artificial feeding and hydration to people in comas. His Labour Party is officially pro-abortion and has passed legislation that would allow nonreproductive cloning and embryo research.

The bill is now in the committee stage. It could either die there or proceed to the next and final reading. If it passes in the House of Lords, it then moves to the House of Commons, where the process begins all over again.

“This bill is the first shot in a long-running battle,” Foley said, “which is why we are making sure it loses. We don't want them to get a propaganda victory.”

Sabrina Arena Ferrisi is based in Rome.