19:46h After a debate of nine hours and 43 minutes of debate the bill was granted its second reading and now goes forward to a committee of the whole House for scrutiny. Lord Falconer described it as a “historic day”.
Read it all and it may be possible [depending on locality] to watch the debate here
Update: Frank Cranmer has a summary of key speeches here and the full transcript of the debate is available from Hansard online here or in pdf form here or indexed by speaker here
I yield to no one in my repugnance for the proposed legislation (which won’t pass the House of Commons, at least for now) and am grieved at George Carey’s volte face, but can we please get the headline right. If its anything, it’s “assisted suicide.” There may be some point in terming abortion “murder” (though whether it convinces the people we need to convince is debatable) but in this case the party affected – at least in principle – is seeking mortality.
[We are content with the headline – victim consent does not mitigate intentional killing – Elf]
update from elfgirl: Note to readers: the original title for this article given by my colleague refered to “assisted murder”. I had no problem with my elf colleague’s use of murder in the title, and that title stood for the past 5 days, but I’ve discovered it meant that the article was not coming up in a search for “assisted dying” in the archives, and so, I’ve changed the title to make it easier to find this entry. Sorry for any confusion.