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While lawmakers in Scotland are debating whether to legalize assisted suicide in the country, a proposed amendment to the bill would criminalize trying to convince someone to not end their lives.
Patrick Harvie MSP, Scottish parliamentarian and a member of the Health Committee, proposed an amendment to the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill that would create a "safe zone" around clinics where doctors are performing assisted suicide.
A person in Scotland could face criminal charges if they do something "influencing the decision of another person to be provided with (assisted suicide)" or "Preventing or impeding another person from being provided with, providing, or facilitating (assisted suicide)."
"Influencing the decision of" was not defined in the amendment.
The Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill would allow for adults over the age of 16, who are "mentally sound" and suffering from a terminal illness, to end their lives. There is no specific prognosis requirement for the bill.
“It’s unthinkable that Scots should be banned on certain streets from offering hope and encouraging someone to choose life, not suicide," said Lois McLatchie Miller, senior legal communications officer at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.
ADF International is a non-profit organization dedicating to protecting "God-given right to live and speak the truth."
This amendment, said Miller, has the potential to "impact important conversations between loved ones, eager to convince an elderly wife or a parent that they are not a burden," or could prevent a doctor from displaying a suicide-prevention poster in his window.
What's more, she said, is that once a "buffer zone" is approved for something like one issue, it "can easily multiply to more and more issues."
In August, a 75-year-old woman in Scotland was arrested for offering to talk to women outside of an abortion clinic. In fact, the "buffer zone" laws in parts of the UK have brought about repeated arrests of people standing in silence.
"Now, the government seeks to apply the same vague, broad rules to ban speech about assisted suicide," she said, adding, "Censorship is always a slippery slope."
