Beware the slippery slope

Helen Joyce

Canada passed an assisted dying law restricted to the terminally ill in 2016. Three years later it was broadened to cover non-fatal illnesses “THE TITLE OF THE BILL IS VERY, VERY CLEAR,” said Kim Leadbeater MP in the run-up to a Commons vote in November. “It’s called the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.” As reassurance that her proposed breach of the legal taboo on helping another person commit suicide would remain strictly limited to “terminally ill adults”, this appeal to nominative determinism lacked a certain persuasiveness. Leadbeater was responding to Shabana Mahmood, another Labour MP, who fears that the bill is a “slippery slope towards death on demand”. Such arguments consist of claiming that after a first, fateful step, it will prove impossible to avoid tumbling all the…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2025

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