GREAT BRITAIN: Parliament's Week: Nov. 16, 1936

The Lords:

¶ Approvingly received from popular Labor Lord Ponsonby, once a page to Queen Victoria, a bill to legalize euthanasia, or "mercy murder" as the penny press describes ending the life of an incurable invalid (TIME, Nov. 18, 1935 et seq.). In cases of this sort, British juries have lately been acquitting the killers with such regularity that the Euthanasia Bill is only to give legal form to an already functioning new principle of justice. Zealots of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society strongly back Ponsonby and thus far the only potent force arrayed against him is the Catholic Church.

If passed, the...

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