Meeting for Sufferings: Assisted dying and end-of-life issues

Friends considered minutes from Staffordshire Area Meeting and North West London Area Meeting about end-of-life issues

by Joseph Jones 18th October 2019

Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) has been looking at end-of-life issues throughout the last decade. In 2010 North Scotland Area Meeting (AM) minuted its opposition to the End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill but MfS did not express its own view. By 2014, MfS forwarded the issue to Quaker Life Central Committee (QLCC), following minutes from London West AM and Leeds AM (this led to the short Love and loss leaflet). This October, Staffordshire AM and North West London AM brought a concern which they hoped Yearly Meeting would adopt: they wanted Friends to advocate for a change in the law, to enable medically-assisted death in certain circumstances.