By Mary Vought | The Federalist

The decision by the United Kingdom’s Parliament to give a preliminary go-ahead for an assisted suicide regime in England and Wales represents a heartbreaking tragedy on two levels. It reinforces how our modern culture has devalued human life and exemplifies how government-run health care systems have accelerated this devaluation.

The recent vote does not guarantee the measure will be enacted into law; it merely continues the legislative process, and lawmakers can — and should — reject it during subsequent stages. But it comes nine years after the same Parliament, by a nearly three-to-one margin, rejected any changes to the law on assisted suicide.

During the debate, the bill’s sponsor, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, claimed that the legislation contained “the most robust and strongest set of safeguards and protections in the world.” But in October, Justin Welby, who as Archbishop of Canterbury heads the Church of England, rightly observed that passing any legislation permitting assisted suicide “opens the way to it broadening out, such that people who are not in that situation [i.e., terminally ill] asking for this, or feeling pressured to ask for it.”

[Read more at thefederalist.com…]