Is the tide turning against Europe’s assisted suicide bills?
Legislation in Scotland, France, and England has run into difficulties.
Assisted suicide seemed to be on the march across Western Europe in 2025.
Bills covering Scotland, France, and England and Wales all passed initial votes, suggesting the practice’s advocates were building an unstoppable momentum.
But 2026 seems to be challenging that assumption. The bills in all three places have run into unexpected difficulties in January. Now, it is the champions of assisted suicide who appear to be on the back foot.
Is it just a coincidence or has Western Europe reached a cultural turning point? That’s hard to answer because each of the jurisdictions has different political dynamics and underlying cultures.
But let’s take a closer look at each to see if there are any commonalities.
🏴 Scotland
The Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill was presented to the Scottish parliament in March 2024.
The bill, intended for use by terminally ill people aged 16 or over, was introduced by Liam McArthur, a member of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and the Scottish government adopted a neutral position.
In May 2025, the bill passed Stage 1 in the parliamentary process by 70 votes to 56, revealing significant opposition to the bill in the unicameral legislature.
The bill has now reached Stage 3 in the process, where members propose and debate amendments. After members have decided on the amendments, there will be a final debate on whether to pass the bill. If the bill is passed, it will become law when it receives royal assent — a constitutional formality.
But in a Jan. 21 op-ed, the journalist Alex Massie said he had detected a shift in sentiment against the bill. He noted that high-profile lawmakers had decided they could no longer support the legislation. He said the bill would fail if just five more turned against it.
Anthony Horan, director of the Catholic Parliamentary Office for Scotland, argued Jan. 23 that “the ground beneath the proposed assisted suicide bill is visibly crumbling.” He also observed that a growing number of lawmakers were moving from support to opposition to the bill, due to the removal or rejection of key safeguards.
The BBC reported Jan. 28 that the bill’s fate was “in the balance,” with some members of the Scottish Parliament “unconvinced that the proposals offer sufficient protections for medics or safeguards against coercion.”
🏴🏴 England and Wales
In September 2024, the Labour Party politician Kim Leadbeater won a ballot to present a private members’ bill to the U.K. parliament.
Private members’ bills rarely become law because they do not receive explicit government backing. But the U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has advocated legalizing assisted suicide and promised to make parliamentary time for a bill seeking to change the law.
The Labour Party strategized how to introduce assisted suicide via a private members’ bill before it came to power — suggesting the Labour government is less neutral on the Leadbeater bill than it has claimed.
In November 2024, members of the U.K. parliament’s lower house, the House of Commons, approved the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill by 330 votes to 275, a majority of 55.
The bill then moved to the upper house, the House of Lords, where it garnered more than 1,000 amendments. The House of Lords generally debates all amendments, slowing the bill’s progress considerably.
Private members’ bills must be passed by both the lower and upper houses of the U.K. parliament in a single parliamentary session. A new session is expected to begin in May.
Charlie Falconer, one of the bill’s sponsors, told the BBC Jan. 28 that “if it goes on like this it has absolutely no hope whatsoever of getting out of the Lords.”
He raised the possibility that the bill’s supporters could resort to a rarely used mechanism to force the bill into law, despite opposition in the House of Lords.
Under the Parliament Act, a bill endorsed by the lower house but rejected by the upper house can be reintroduced in a new parliamentary session.
But for a member of Parliament to present an exactly identical bill, they would need to be placed in the top five in a ballot of hundreds of members seeking to introduce private members’ bills on other topics.
If the identical bill were endorsed by the lower house for a second time, the upper house could not block it, and it would become law at the end of the parliamentary session.
The Parliament Act option has only been used seven times since 1911 — and never for a private members’ bill. Its use in the case of the assisted suicide bill would be highly controversial.
Another possibility would be for the government to propose a royal commission — a formal public inquiry — to study practical matters raised by the bill.
The bill’s opponents argue that the threat of the Parliament Act is a sign of desperation on the part of supporters who fail to recognize that the text is irreparably flawed.
🇫🇷 France
During his 2022 re-election campaign, French President Emmanuel Macron promised to reform the existing law on end-of-life care, which prohibited assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Shortly after his re-election, Macron announced the launch of a citizens’ convention on end-of-life issues. A citizens’ convention is a mechanism in which a group of randomly selected people deliberate on a major social or political issue. The 184 members of the convention on end-of-life issues voted in 2023 in favor of “active assistance in dying.”
The government presented a bill on the topic in 2024. In early 2025, it was split into two separate pieces of legislation, one on palliative care and the other on assisted suicide and euthanasia.
In March 2025, the politician Olivier Falorni, from the Democrats Group, tabled the Proposition de loi relative au droit à l’aide à mourir (Proposal for a law on the right to assisted dying), which would legalize both assisted suicide and euthanasia.
The National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament, adopted the bill at its first reading in May 2025. There were 305 votes in favor, 199 against, and 57 abstentions.
But on Jan. 21, members of the French Senate unexpectedly rejected all forms of assisted suicide and euthanasia proposed in the bill.
The Senate rejected the bill outright Jan. 28 by 181 votes to 121.
In a Jan. 29 statement, the French bishops’ conference said: “This rejection appears to be a sign of major political and societal deadlock and highlights the seriousness of the ethical issues at stake.”
“The Senate vote, by highlighting the lack of consensus, only serves to underscore the expectations, fears, and even opposition expressed in society. Killing will never be a humane, fraternal, and dignified response to suffering.”
The legislation will return to the lower house Feb. 16 for a second reading.
Observers believe the National Assembly will adopt the bill again, given that the Speaker, Yaël Braun-Pivet, is a strong supporter of the legislation.
At that point, the bill could head once again to the Senate. Another option would be for the Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, to create a joint committee of the lower and upper houses to create a consensus text. If no consensus emerged, the lower house would make the final decision on the text.
Another possibility is that Macron could call a national referendum.
Ahead of the February debate, the bishops’ conference urged lawmakers “to listen to the profound concerns of healthcare professionals, patients, and their families.”
It appealed for future debates to be “conducted without haste or acceleration dictated by electoral calendars, but with rigor and serenity, in the service of the dignity of the most vulnerable and taking into consideration the anthropological and societal consequences of possible ‘active assistance in dying.’”
Please, God, yes.
Charlie Falconer is one of the most evil people alive in Britain