CV NEWS FEED // In a Wednesday statement, the leading postgraduate medical training college in Ireland came out in opposition to a proposed law that would legalize so-called “assisted suicide” in the country.
The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) indicated that it “opposes the introduction of any legislation supportive of assisted suicide because it is contrary to best medical practice.”
“This position, adopted by the RCPI governing council in 2017, was developed by a working group comprising representatives from a range of specialities within RCPI,” the college’s statement elaborated.
The RCPI noted that in coming to this decision, the group of representatives “reviewed research literature and the positions of medical professional bodies in Ireland and worldwide and made a recommendation to RCPI Council.”
RCPI President Dr. Diarmuid O’Shea stated:
Dying and death are part of a continuum of care for any person with a chronic or life limiting illness. Dying with dignity in our society is made possible by the delivery of compassionate, supportive, and expert care by physicians, nurses, health and social care professionals, and others working in hospitals, hospices, GP practices, and other community settings across our country.
“Such care and the people providing it should be appropriately supported and funded,” O’Shea added.
“Dying with dignity” is a euphemism for “assisted suicide” commonly used by supporters of the controversial practice.
Dr. Feargal Twomey, a specialist in palliative and end-of-life care, agreed with O’Shea.
“Legislating for assisted suicide threatens to undermine” end-of-life care, he pointed out. “Introduction of legislation on assisted suicide has the potential for immense harm and unintended consequences and our view is that the potential harms outweigh the arguments in favour of legislation for assisted suicide.”
Twomey is the chairman of RPCI’s expert group.
The Irish news site Gript reported that the RCPI statement “comes following [Wednesday’s] release of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Assisted Dying’s report which recommended that Government legislate for assisted suicide in Ireland.”
Hope Ireland, “a coalition of medical professionals and disability rights advocates,” blasted the Oireachtas Joint Committee’s report on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday.
“The permissive findings of the report … will quickly bring Ireland into the same chaotic horror as Canada,” the group warned. “The report’s findings are not an accurate reflection on the evidence presented to the committee by professionals.”
“Assisted suicide” has been legal in Canada since 2016. In 2022, over 4% of the country’s total deaths were attributed to its practice.
Per its website’s mission page, Hope Ireland is an organization that supports “encouraging awareness of palliative care calling on the [Irish] government to increase access to palliative care.”
The group states that it opposes “the introduction of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Ireland, through bringing informed arguments to public debate.”
Irish disability rights advocate Dr. Kevin Fitzpatrick founded Hope Ireland nine years ago.
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On its website, the RCPI describes itself as “a postgraduate medical training college dedicated to ensuring that doctors have the skills to provide patients with the best possible care.”
It was founded in 1654 and serves “a network of over 13,000 doctors from 90 countries.”
Ireland is still an overwhelmingly majority-Catholic country, although its population has become significantly more secular over the past few decades. In 2022, 69% of Irish citizens said they were Catholic, compared to 79% just six years earlier.
The country legalized abortion in 2018 and same-sex “marriage” in 2015. Some observers, however, are hopeful of a cultural turnaround in the Green Isle. As CatholicVote reported last week,
The Irish government’s call to vote in favor of redefining the meanings of “marriage” and “woman” in a double referendum failed resoundingly when a large majority of voters on Saturday rejected the new language.
[The] government of Prime Minister Leo Varadkar called for the referendum to pass two proposals, the Family Amendment and the Care Amendment. Both aimed to change the text of Article 41 in the Irish constitution, written in 1937.
The Family Amendment would have changed the section of the constitution that reads: “The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society…” The language of the constitution also affirms that the family is founded on marriage.
Days after the stunning defeat of the progressive bill, Varadkar made the shocking move of announcing his resignation.
“I think when you lose by this kind of margin, there are a lot of people who got this wrong and I am certainly one of them,” the liberal prime minister had commented after the Irish people shot down his pro-LGBT and pro-abortion referendum effort.
