Scots Pro-Death MP Puts The Best Face On Defeat Of Her Assisted Suicide Bill

Scot MSP Margo MacDonald, she who has just had her proposed legalization of assisted suicide go down in flames, is already fighting back. She’s trying here to put the bravest face on things, but the truth is the Scots don’t want legalized, medicalized killing.

Margo MacDonald: Assisted suicide bill may have died, but I'll still fight on

So where do we go from here? My Bill on assisted suicide, or dying, which ever way you call it, was comprehensively thumped in the vote last Thursday. I know of four MSPs who would have voted for the Bill to go to the next stage, had they been able to get out of their sickbed, the Borders and other locations furth of Edinburgh. But even if they'd been able to vote, the Bill would still have been heavily defeated by the coalition of convenience that was the parliamentary opposition.

I'm not bitter, because I knew what to expect. Realistically, I calculated between twenty and thirty votes were just possible. I hoped against hope one or two more MSPs might vote to have the Bill subjected to line by line scrutiny, given the public interest in the topic. In the end that counted for nothing when measured against the realities of the end-part of this parliamentary session. more