The bill to legalise assisted dying is a “licence to kill” that puts vulnerable people at risk, Theresa May has said, as the legislation was debated in the House of Lords for the first time.
The former prime minister said she opposed the bill because she said people in England and Wales with disabilities, chronic illnesses or mental health conditions could feel under pressure to end their lives, and “because there is a risk that legalising assisted dying reinforces the dangerous notion that some lives are less worth living than others”. She added: “I have a friend who calls it ‘the licence to kill bill’.”
