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Everything about the progress of Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying Bill seems to be pre-arranged. Under the heading "Target 09", the Voluntary Euthanasia Society's newsletter states "The Select Committee's Report will soon be debated and Lord Joffe is planning to reintroduce the Bill to the Lords in the autumn..... We have a target of getting a finalised version of the Bill into the Commons in this Parliament by 2009." (That is wise - if there were a change of Government after that its chances would not be so good). During the sittings of the Select Committee it became clear that the chance of persuading committed supporters of euthanasia to think again was absolutely nil, whatever the evidence put before them. The Assisted Dying Bill is supposed to be passed nem. con. at 2nd Reading in the Lords and referred to a Committee of the whole House. It sounds like the old story of a man in hospital who looked down at his feet and found they were on a pathway marked in a map on the wall "REFUSE TO GO TO THE INCINERATOR". Will the Peers refuse?
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