At a time when various states and countries are ramping up their support for euthanasia, the Scottish Parliament has taken a stance against it.
Late Tuesday evening, members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) voted 69 to 57 against a proposal that would have legalized assisted suicide for both terminally ill and mentally competent adults in Scotland.
This isn’t about a single overnight vote, but a series of debates and amendments over the last couple of years. Liam McArthur MSP proposed his Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill in March 2024. Tuesday’s vote served as more of a renewed sense of unwillingness to advance such death-centered legislation. McArthur claimed this will not be the last time this issue comes before the Scottish Parliament, but that hasn’t stopped many from welcoming the outcome with open arms.
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“We thank God that MSPs got the message that they simply could not pass this wretched bill,” said Simon Calvert, deputy director of The Christian Institute. “The many constituents who contacted their elected representatives can take a bow. So many colleges of medicine and disability groups expressed concern about the risks to the vulnerable and the sheer unworkability of the proposals. I think the lesson … is that there is no such thing as a ‘safe’ assisted suicide bill. Instead of offering death to the sick, we invite the MSPs who lost the vote today to transfer their campaigning energies to offering them better palliative care instead.”
Others have voiced gratitude, delight, and relief over the vote’s defeat. Rev. Alasdair Macleod, moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, rightly acknowledged that “this decision affirms that every human life is precious and worthy of protection. As Christians we believe that human life is a gift from God, and that our calling as a society is to care for one another, especially in times of weakness, illness, and suffering.” It’s not about quickening death, he emphasized, but “improving palliative care, supporting families, and strengthening communities so that no one feels that their life has lost its value.”
Like all pro-death legislation, “this bill would have opened a Pandora’s box, which would have fundamentally changed healthcare across Scotland,” said Dr. Stuart Weir of the Christian policy group, CARE for Scotland. “If you look at countries where assisted suicide is legal, the same troubling and distressing pattern emerges: numbers increase year-on-year, and categories of eligibility are widened.”
In the end, this is an extremely serious matter. Not merely because it deals with life and death, but because many of the people who are engaged in the conversation have been directly affected by either not receiving the medical interventions they’d hoped for, regretting the medical interventions they’d opted for, or not at all sure of what medical interventions they should choose at all.
It’s also worth acknowledging that, especially from a more secular perspective, this simply isn’t an easy issue to navigate. From certain angles, the ability to end one’s suffering — even through death — can seem like the most compassionate choice. It can come across as mercy, justice, or freedom (as almost anything under carefully curated pretenses can). And yet, when considering weighty affairs such as euthanasia, we can’t afford to base our opinions on subjective feelings or engineered approaches. Rather, we must face the facts and ask ourselves: what’s really happening here?
Consider a separate controversial issue: abortion. Many in the pro-abortion camp do lean into the arguments of compassion, autonomy, and the like. Pro-lifers are labeled “pro-birthers” in an attempt to paint the picture that those who champion life are really just trying to “force” a mother into something she doesn’t want. Abortion activists love to argue that a woman has the “right” to do what she wants with her body, and that nothing — no government, no religion, no person — should ever come between her and that perceived right. Yet again, when it comes to abortion, we must ask: what’s really happening here? I’ll tell you.
In the sterile hush of a clinic room, a tiny heart — beating with the rhythm of life knit together by the Creator Himself — falls forever silent as cold steel tears limb from limb, crushing a skull still soft with promise, vacuuming away the blood-warm miracle of a soul that God had already named and fated for laughter and love. What abortion truly is is not a right or a choice or a medical procedure — it’s the deliberate slaughter of the most defenseless among us, the shedding of innocent blood that reduces a child to medical waste in a biohazard bag.
That’s what’s really happening with abortion, and there’s no sense in sugar-coating it.
Let’s return now to the topic of assisted suicide, peel back the compassionate rhetoric surrounding it, and circle back to our question: what’s really happening here? The reality is, euthanasia isn’t the gentle hand of mercy it pretends to be. It’s the moment when a son or daughter or suffering individual signs the papers that doom an image bearer to be poisoned like a wounded animal. Their final gasps are stolen not by the Creator who numbers our days, but by white-coated executioners who whisper “dignity” while they snuff out the last flickers of a life.
In that sterile chamber of duplicity, the cross is mocked anew. The suffering that Christ embraced for our redemption, if thought of at all, is dismissed as insignificant. The wheelchair-bound father is deemed a burden rather than a living sermon on endurance and grace. Families walk away clutching certificates of death, forever haunted by the bloodguilt that no law can wash away — because, be it fueled by grief, ignorance, fear, or even good intentions, they ultimately chose the serpent’s shortcut over the Father’s promise that every labored breath, every tear-soaked night, is woven into an eternity where life is not discarded but gathered home in His perfect time.
Euthanasia, presented as freedom from suffering, is just a license to extinguish life when it becomes inconvenient, burdensome, or “undignified.” But the Bible declares unequivocally that life isn’t ours to dispose of at will. It’s a sacred gift from the Creator. Scripture declares that every person bears the imprint of God’s image (Genesis 1:27), endowed with intrinsic dignity that endures through weakness, pain, and even the valley of the shadow of death.
The commandment “You shall not murder” isn’t limited to acts of malice but prohibits the intentional taking of any innocent human life — including our own or that of the vulnerable. God alone holds sovereignty over life and death, and to introduce assisted suicide is to usurp His authority, to treat suffering as the ultimate evil rather than an occasion for grace, dependence on Him, and the redemptive work of Christ.
LifeNews Note: Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand, where this originally appeared.
