Our CEO Fraser Sutherland has written to The Herald over an inaccurate article by Dr Ramona Coelho.
With bills under consideration to legalise assisted dying at both Holyrood and Westminster, religious opponents are ramping up their opposition. The latest evidence for this is a recent article in The Herald by Dr Ramona Coelho, a Canadian physician and conscientious objector to assisted dying. Her article, entitled “Weak safeguards in Scotland will ‘push the poor, the elderly and disabled towards assisted death'” was scaremongering and inaccurate. It was based on Dr Coelho’s trenchant and faith-based opposition to assisted dying. While it suggests that her objections are based on safeguarding, no safety measures would be enough to satisfy Dr Coelho’s agenda.
Fraser’s full letter, edited for publication, reads as follows:
Dear Editor
Regarding your article of 13 November by Dr Ramona Coelho (“Weak safeguards in Scotland will ‘push the poor, the elderly and disabled towards assisted death’”), this article is by a known and vociferous opponent of assisted dying in Canada who opposes the provision of end of life choice on religious principle. She presents her opposition to assisted dying in Scotland and Canada as based on our bill’s “weak safeguards”. Aside from the fact that Liam McArthur MSP’s bill includes very robust checks and safety measures, the truth is that no safeguards would be stringent enough to satisfy Dr Coelho’s agenda.
Dr Coelho has strong connections to religious organisations and causes which evidently influence her thinking on assisted dying. She is a spokesperson of the Christian Medical Society of Canada (which actively campaigns against Canada’s Medical Aid in Dying or MAiD law). She has co-signed a communication from the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute against assisted dying. And she is a spokesperson for the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada.
As a Christian medic, Dr Coelho is entitled to object to assisted dying on religious grounds. But she presents her opposition as based on concern for “marginalised” groups. This implies that, if Scotland’s assisted dying bill had stronger safeguards in place, she might be swayed on its efficacy. This is disingenuous. Dr. Coelho is a religious opponent of end-of-life choice and unflinching in her enmity towards assisted dying laws of any kind. In this sense, the whole tone of her argument is specious.
It is vital that the Scottish public receive calm and informed testimony from Canada on how assisted dying is working in practice, rather than scaremongering from individuals with hidden agendas.
The strength of Dr. Coelho’s enmity explains her tendency to rely on anecdote (“I recall a conversation with a man”, etcetera) rather than robust data on how assisted dying in Canada actually works. This data shows that, contrary to her claims, marginalised groups are less likely to use assisted dying than the rest of the population. It is, in fact, people higher on the socio-economic spectrum who are most likely to use it. She also implies that assisted dying will become an alternative to palliative care if introduced. This is demonstrably false based on evidence from Canada, where, since the introduction of MAiD, there has been a major increase in the funding and staffing of palliative care. All this was explained by Dr Stefanie Green, a provider of assisted dying in Canada, who gave evidence alongside Dr Coelho at the health committee evidence session to which her article refers.
Two more facts are worth pointing out. Firstly, Dr Coelho refers extensively to anecdotes from Ontario (where she is based) about patients using MAiD “who are not dying.” As she knows, Scotland’s proposed law would be available only to those who are terminally ill, thus all of her examples in that category are functionally irrelevant. Claims of a ‘slippery slope’, such that the law would inevitably be expanded once in place to include those who are not dying, have been proved wrong by the countless jurisdictions around the world where terminal illness-only models of assisted dying have been in place, unaltered, for decades.
Secondly, Dr Coelho is a conscientious objector to assisted dying. She has even refused to refer patients seeking MAiD to another clinician willing to support them through the process. She therefore has literally no involvement in the provision of assisted dying in Canada, in spite of positioning herself as an expert on it. It is vital that the Scottish public receive calm and informed testimony from Canada on how assisted dying is working in practice, rather than scaremongering from individuals with hidden agendas.
Yours sincerely
Fraser Sutherland
CEO Humanist Society Scotland
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