Latest news with #Dying
The National
13-05-2025
- Health
- The National
How did MSPs vote in the landmark assisted dying vote?
The Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill has passed at stage one by 70 votes to 56, with one abstention. It means the legislation will now go through for further consideration and amendments. Prior to the debate, demonstrations were held by supporters of both sides of the debate as emotions ran high. The bill would make it legal for eligible terminally ill adults to request, and be provided with assistance to, end their own life. Full list of how all MSPs voted on assisted dying: For Adam, George (Paisley) (SNP) Adam, Karen (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP) Arthur, Tom (Renfrewshire South) (SNP) Beattie, Colin (Midlothian North and Musselburgh) (SNP) Briggs, Miles (Lothian) (Con) Brown, Siobhian (Ayr) (SNP) Burgess, Ariane (Highlands and Islands) (Green) Burnett, Alexander (Aberdeenshire West) (Con) Callaghan, Stephanie (Uddingston and Bellshill) (SNP) Carlaw, Jackson (Eastwood) (Con) Chapman, Maggie (North East Scotland) (Green) Clark, Katy (West Scotland) (Lab) Coffey, Willie (Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley) (SNP) Cole-Hamilton, Alex (Edinburgh Western) (LD) Dey, Graeme (Angus South) (SNP) Don-Innes, Natalie (Renfrewshire North and West) (SNP) Dornan, James (Glasgow Cathcart) (SNP) Dowey, Sharon (South Scotland) (Con) Dunbar, Jackie (Aberdeen Donside) (SNP) Fairlie, Jim (Perthshire South and Kinross-shire) (SNP) Findlay, Russell (West Scotland) (Con) FitzPatrick, Joe (Dundee City West) (SNP) Gibson, Kenneth (Cunninghame North) (SNP) Gilruth, Jenny (Mid Fife and Glenrothes) (SNP) Grahame, Christine (Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale) (SNP) Greene, Jamie (West Scotland) (LD) Greer, Ross (West Scotland) (Green) Gulhane, Sandesh (Glasgow) (Con) Hamilton, Rachael (Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire) (Con) Harper, Emma (South Scotland) (SNP) Harvie, Patrick (Glasgow) (Green) Hepburn, Jamie (Cumbernauld and Kilsyth) (SNP) Hyslop, Fiona (Linlithgow) (SNP) Johnson, Daniel (Edinburgh Southern) (Lab) Kerr, Liam (North East Scotland) (Con) Kidd, Bill (Glasgow Anniesland) (SNP) Lennon, Monica (Central Scotland) (Lab) Lochhead, Richard (Moray) (SNP) Lumsden, Douglas (North East Scotland) (Con) MacDonald, Gordon (Edinburgh Pentlands) (SNP) Mackay, Gillian (Central Scotland) (Green) Mackay, Rona (Strathkelvin and Bearsden) (SNP) Macpherson, Ben (Edinburgh Northern and Leith) (SNP) Martin, Gillian (Aberdeenshire East) (SNP) McAllan, Màiri (Clydesdale) (SNP) McArthur, Liam (Orkney Islands) (LD) McKee, Ivan (Glasgow Provan) (SNP) McLennan, Paul (East Lothian) (SNP) Minto, Jenni (Argyll and Bute) (SNP) Mochan, Carol (South Scotland) (Lab) Nicoll, Audrey (Aberdeen South and North Kincardine) (SNP) Rennie, Willie (North East Fife) (LD) Robertson, Angus (Edinburgh Central) (SNP) Robison, Shona (Dundee City East) (SNP) Ruskell, Mark (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Green) Slater, Lorna (Lothian) (Green) Smyth, Colin (South Scotland) (Lab) Somerville, Shirley-Anne (Dunfermline) (SNP) Stevenson, Collette (East Kilbride) (SNP) Stewart, Alexander (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con) Stewart, Kaukab (Glasgow Kelvin) (SNP) Stewart, Kevin (Aberdeen Central) (SNP) Sweeney, Paul (Glasgow) (Lab) Thomson, Michelle (Falkirk East) (SNP) Todd, Maree (Caithness, Sutherland and Ross) (SNP) Torrance, David (Kirkcaldy) (SNP) Tweed, Evelyn (Stirling) (SNP) Whitfield, Martin (South Scotland) (Lab) Whitham, Elena (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley) (SNP) Whittle, Brian (South Scotland) (Con) Against Adamson, Clare (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP) Allan, Alasdair (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP) Baillie, Jackie (Dumbarton) (Lab) Baker, Claire (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab) Balfour, Jeremy (Lothian) (Con) Bibby, Neil (West Scotland) (Lab) Boyack, Sarah (Lothian) (Lab) Brown, Keith (Clackmannanshire and Dunblane) (SNP) Carson, Finlay (Galloway and West Dumfries) (Con) Choudhury, Foysol (Lothian) (Lab) Constance, Angela (Almond Valley) (SNP) Doris, Bob (Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn) (SNP) Duncan-Glancy, Pam (Glasgow) (Lab) Eagle, Tim (Highlands and Islands) (Con) Ewing, Annabelle (Cowdenbeath) (SNP) Ewing, Fergus (Inverness and Nairn) (SNP) Forbes, Kate (Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch) (SNP) Fraser, Murdo (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con) Gallacher, Meghan (Central Scotland) (Con) Golden, Maurice (North East Scotland) (Con) Gosal, Pam (West Scotland) (Con) Gougeon, Mairi (Angus North and Mearns) (SNP) Grant, Rhoda (Highlands and Islands) (Lab) Griffin, Mark (Central Scotland) (Lab) Halcro Johnston, Jamie (Highlands and Islands) (Con) Haughey, Clare (Rutherglen) (SNP) Hoy, Craig (South Scotland) (Con) Kerr, Stephen (Central Scotland) (Con) Leonard, Richard (Central Scotland) (Lab) MacGregor, Fulton (Coatbridge and Chryston) (SNP) Maguire, Ruth (Cunninghame South) (SNP) Proxy vote cast by Rona Mackay Marra, Michael (North East Scotland) (Lab) Mason, John (Glasgow Shettleston) (Ind) Matheson, Michael (Falkirk West) (SNP) McCall, Roz (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con) McMillan, Stuart (Greenock and Inverclyde) (SNP) McNair, Marie (Clydebank and Milngavie) (SNP) McNeill, Pauline (Glasgow) (Lab) Mountain, Edward (Highlands and Islands) (Con) Mundell, Oliver (Dumfriesshire) (Con) O'Kane, Paul (West Scotland) (Lab) Regan, Ash (Edinburgh Eastern) (Alba) Roddick, Emma (Highlands and Islands) (SNP) Ross, Douglas (Highlands and Islands) (Con) Rowley, Alex (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab) Sarwar, Anas (Glasgow) (Lab) Simpson, Graham (Central Scotland) (Con) Smith, Liz (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con) Sturgeon, Nicola (Glasgow Southside) (SNP) Swinney, John (Perthshire North) (SNP) Villalba, Mercedes (North East Scotland) (Lab) Webber, Sue (Lothian) (Con) Wells, Annie (Glasgow) (Con) White, Tess (North East Scotland) (Con) Wishart, Beatrice (Shetland Islands) (LD) Yousaf, Humza (Glasgow Pollok) (SNP) Abstentions
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What is the law on abortion in the UK as MPs prepare to vote on decriminalisation?
MPs are set to vote this summer on whether abortion should be decriminalised in England and Wales. Two Labour backbenchers are reportedly putting forward proposals to change the current law around abortion, which would remove the threat of women being prosecuted for ending their own pregnances. The Abortion Act 1967 allows women to end their pregnancies but only in specific circumstances - under medical supervision up to 24 weeks, or beyond in certain circumstances, such as if the mother's life is at risk or the foetus has a serious abnormality. Campaigners have been calling for changes to the law, bringing legislation in English and Welsh in line with Northern Ireland where abortion was fully decriminalised in 2020, as well as other countries. Previous plans to table amendments ran out of time before the 2024 general election but are now set to come before MPs in what will be the second so-called 'vote of conscience' this year, alongside the Assisted Dying bill. With changes on the horizon, Yahoo News looks at the current law around abortion and what amendments would mean. It is a criminal offence in England, Wales and Scotland for a woman to procure her own abortion. However, the Abortion Act 1967 allows for abortions under specific circumstances, including up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, or occasionally later if the mother's life is at risk or if the foetus has a severe abnormality. This means that the Abortion Act does not grant a right to an abortion, but makes prosecution exempt in certain circumstances. According to campaigners, this means women who end a pregnancy outside of these parameters face criminalisation and potential prosecution. Inducing a miscarriage can be punishable with up to life in prison. A briefing document by a group of organisations calling for changes to the law, says: "As it stands, England and Wales has the most severe penalty for having an 'illegal' abortion in the world – a maximum sentence of life in prison." Most illegal abortions are prosecuted under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, but until 2022 it is believed that only three women had ever been convicted. However, an investigation by Sky News suggested that there has been a rise in the number of people being investigated, and in some cases prosecuted, over so-called "illegal" abortions in recent years. It found that between 2023 and 2024, 29 people in England and Wales were recorded as under police investigation on suspicion of "procuring an illegal abortion" or the "intentional destruction of a viable unborn child". According to data collected by the Guardian from the Crown Prosecution Service, 13 people made a first appearance at a magistrates court charged with abortion-related offences in 2022; four people in 2019; and three in each of 2020 and 2021. Separate data from around half of Britain's police forces, showed at least 11 people were arrested in 2023 on suspicion of child destruction or inducing a miscarriage, including a 31-year-old woman in north Wales 'reported to have taken illicit substances to initiate an abortion'. The briefing note around potential changes to the law cited the example of a woman sentenced to 28 months in prison for using abortion pills to end her own pregnancy in England in 2023, and said that at the time of the document's production two other women awaited similar trials. It also cited examples including:- Seven police officers arrived at the home of a woman who had called an ambulance when her baby was born prematurely, about 18 months ago. They searched her bins and provided no assistance while she performed mouth-to-mouth on her unconscious child, who was still attached to her placenta by umbilical cord. Mother and baby survived. A vulnerable 17-year-old girl presented to abortion services in the early days of the pandemic. She was unable to travel to a clinic on two occasions owing to COVID restrictions so passed the legal abortion limit and was referred to children's services and antenatal care. Soon after, she delivered a stillborn baby at home. She was investigated by the police on suspicion of abortion law offences. A woman was taken to hospital by ambulance owing to complications from early medical abortion medication that she was given after a medical consultation this year. She believed she was ten weeks pregnant, but it emerged she was actually at 19 weeks. Despite being within five weeks of the legal abortion limit when she was discharged from hospital in the early hours, she returned home to find a police cordon and officers searching her property. Campaigners say a change in the law would remove the threat of criminal investigation and prosecution for women who end their own pregnancies in England and Wales. It has previously been suggested that the proposed changes would have no impact on the provision of abortion care, or the laws that govern doctors, nurses and midwives. This would mean that there would still be a 24-week time limit and in exceptional circumstances beyond, and there would be no change to the 10-week limit on telemedicine, agreed by Parliament in 2022. Abortions would still require two doctors' signatures to be legally provided and women would still have to meet one of the grounds laid out in the Abortion Act 1967. Louise McCudden from abortion provider MSI - one of more than 30 organisations including the British Medical Association, Women's Aid, and the Royal College of Gynaecologists that is calling for politicians to look again at the law - previously told Sky News: "We don't believe abortion should be a crime. "It's healthcare, and it should be regulated the same as any other healthcare." Women can have an abortion surgically, or can take two pills, known as a medical termination. Previously women would need to take the first pill under medical supervision, but in 2020 emergency legislation meant they could receive both pills by post after a remote consultation. What was the biggest change to abortion provision since 1967 was made permanent in 2022. According to campaigners, nearly 50 countries do not criminalise women who seek to end their pregnancy outside the law, including Northern Ireland, France, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. They argue that even countries with strong anti-abortion laws do not criminalise women under their strict abortion laws, including the USA and Poland. In June 2022, the US supreme court ruled that there was no constitutional right to abortion, with the laws now decided at state level, resulting in the banning of abortion in more than a dozen states. Woman tearfully says she would not have had abortion if she knew pregnancy stage (PA) Scots women 'still having to travel to England for abortions' (Daily Record) What has Trump said about abortion rights in the US? (Yahoo News)
New York Times
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Dying for Sex' Review: She's Not Looking for Love
Oh how the body keeps the score in 'Dying for Sex,' an eight-episode FX dramedy, arriving Friday on Hulu, about a woman with terminal cancer. And if the big mort is near, maybe some petite mort is in order. Michelle Williams stars as Molly, who is sitting in an inert couple's therapy session with her mild husband (Jay Duplass) when she answers a call from her doctor. Her cancer is back, and it's Stage 4. She walks out of the office and out of her sexless marriage and into the loving embrace of her BFF (Jenny Slate) and a world of unbridled sexual exploration. Well, bridled a little, in that Molly engages in some bondage play as the show goes on. Her medication is making her horny, but also, simply being alive is itself a horn-inducing endeavor. She experiments with everything, starting with a marathon masturbation session where she tries a variety of vibrators and erotica: a cam guy, a nature documentary, the movie 'Speed.' She has never really tried to figure out what she likes, and she's never had an orgasm with a partner. She wants both of those things to change, and she can't waste any more time. 'You're going to be dead in five years,' she tells herself. 'Nothing matters.' Might as well hit on the guy in the elevator. Might as well swipe and swipe and have all kinds of interesting encounters. She's not looking for love, she's looking for pleasure — though she finds a bit of both. She unlocks her inner domme and gets the rush of her life by (consensually) kicking her neighbor (Rob Delaney) squarely in the penis. Unfortunately, this act also breaks her hip; the cancer is in her bones. 'Dying' is based on a true story and adapted from the nonfiction podcast of the same name, which was created by the real-life Molly, Molly Kochan, and her best friend, Nikki Boyer, who is a producer on this show. (Kochan died in 2019.) The TV series was created by Kim Rosenstock and Elizabeth Meriwether, and it lives and dies by Williams's performance. Williams nails the paradox at the center of the show: As Molly's body grows weaker, her self-possession grows stronger. She's so frail — but also not. 'Pain is political; pleasure is political,' says Sonya (Esco Jouléy), Molly's palliative care social worker and sage. The medical care one receives, the sexual attentiveness one enjoys, the perceived legitimacy of one's ideas — these are all woven together. The show has a little fun with actual politics too, though. 'So when did you figure out that you liked orgasm torture?' Molly asks a playmate. 'Probably when I was canvassing for Obama, like '06,' he says. Later, while enjoying some humiliation play in her neighbor's apartment, Molly picks up a photo. 'Is this your dad?' she spits. 'How did such an attractive man produce such a [expletive] like you?' 'That's not my dad,' he says. 'That's Bill DeBlasio.' Cancer is what ends Molly's life, but being sexually abused as a 7-year-old by her mother's boyfriend is what poisoned it. She's haunted by the abuse. The man's ghostly figure appears in her peripheral vision while she's hooking up, and her relationship with her mother (Sissy Spacek) is fraught at best. Molly has to accept having cancer and she has to reject the shame of abuse. She practices telling people — partners, doctors — how, when, where and with what they are allowed to touch her. Among her last words are 'my body did a good job.' For all the ways 'Dying for Sex' is transgressive and audacious in its frankness about pain and pleasure, it can also feel awfully generic. Slate's Nikki is an actress, so of course the play she's in is eye-rollingly pretentious; she's disorganized and chaotic, so of course she has a giant black hole of a purse. Repressed, self-conscious straight white women getting Sherpa-ed into liberation through the enlightened guidance of queer characters felt a little fresher on 'Shrill' or 'Somebody Somewhere.' But as Sherpas go, 'Dying' has a great one: Jouléy is an understated knockout as Sonya, who feels like a real person while other characters, like Nikki, feel more like characters. Delaney's performance has the perfect amount of sexual and social charisma — he towers over Williams, but it is she who dominates him, and we're never afraid for Molly's safety even as she becomes weaker and weaker in his presence. In the finale, Paula Pell plays a hospice worker who explains to Molly how dying works, what it will feel like, how her body will know what to do. It's an extraordinary monologue in a lot of ways, unfussy but not coldly clinical, demystifying but also in its way mystical. What's more ordinary than having a body, than having sex, than dying? Or maybe, what's more extraordinary?
New York Times
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
He's Dead. His Ghost Isn't the Only Thing Haunting His Girlfriend.
Death and its ambassadors, ghosts, are perpetually in style. Lookit: Just yesterday, in fact, several people died. Already this year, two movies on the topic have premiered: a remastering of Michael Roemer's brilliant 1976 cinéma vérité film 'Dying,' and 'Presence,' Steven Soderbergh's paranormal thriller about a ghost haunting the new home of a seemingly typical family. Both reminded me of Max, the charming ghost protagonist of 'The Echoes,' Evie Wyld's fourth novel. I'm not spoiling anything by revealing his death: Max is dead in the first sentence of the book. But he has not been allowed to move on, or even leave his London flat. How has Max died and why is his spirit anchored on the earthly plane? Those are the first two mysteries of 'The Echoes.' Max is stumped on the first question; for the second, he has a theory — perhaps he's stuck because he still has matters to settle with his girlfriend, Hannah. 'Love is what brings about a ghost — isn't it? The unfinished business of love.' Until Max's death, he and Hannah lived relatively peaceably, though Hannah maintained a pesky unknowability. She never let him meet her estranged family and she never spoke much about her hometown, a tortured scratch of land in Australia's bush country called (pointedly) the Echoes. The novel cycles between four chapter types, always in this order: 'After,' 'Before,' 'Then' and what we'll in this review call '[Character].' 'After' is narrated by Max's ghost following his death; 'Before' follows Hannah grappling with her own problems while Max is still alive; 'Then' flashes back even further, tracking the troubled childhood that Hannah refuses to share; and '[Character]' chapters are each named for and contain the point of view of different figures from Hannah's past. Because the novel skips around in time, in some cases with flashbacks buried in flashbacks, its perch — the point of telling — is at first hard to pin down. For the sake of simplicity, I decided it was in the 'After' chapters, when Max watches Hannah mourn. The novel's focus feels most assured here and, not coincidentally, it's in these sections that the language soars. Death has afforded Max a second, albeit tardy sight, allowing him to finally appreciate Hannah (her 'eyelashes with their pinch of skin at the end'), their relationship ('I recall how she would slide her fingers along from the inside of my elbow to my wrist and how it sent small eels through me') and the facts that shaped their days (for example, their flat with its 'low ceilings like it's keeping its head down' and moths building nests under the carpets). I could have read an entire novel dedicated to Max and Hannah's quotidian life in London — in its best and most lyrical moments, 'The Echoes' documents the messy, divine business of being alive. But the novel's third mystery resides far from London, in the Echoes, and unfolds in the sections detailing Hannah's childhood. Hannah's life, we come to find, was upended by the arrival of her ne'er-do-well Uncle Tony. Slowly, the reader learns the reason for Hannah's familial estrangement. The titular terrain is racked with its own calamitous past, one that haunts its residents. A chapter titled 'Mr. Manningtree,' told from the perspective of the landowner's heir, documents the history of the land, where kidnapped Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were brought for 'reform.' (This is historically accurate; Wyld includes an endnote attribution.) Though Mr. Manningtree grows repulsed by his family's practices, the resulting wisdom is less revelatory than one might hope: 'When his lesson was over and the girl stood he saw blood on the back of her dress and it was the first time he'd ever thought about it, but how funny to have a different-colored skin but the blood is the same.' Point of view is a gift writers bestow; in a novel with a ghost main character, I longed for more engagement with the ghosts that no doubt haunted the land. There is a phrase often attributed to David Foster Wallace: 'Every love story is a ghost story.' I thought of this while reading 'The Echoes,' as Max mourns the love he failed to notice as time forges on without him. But fast-forward enough, and every story is a ghost story, because everyone in it will one day die. Though Max's romantic afterlife seems like the heart of 'The Echoes,' the novel makes the dispersal of information and the slow exposure of the characters' secrets its engine. Thus, the story buries its revelations toward the end, forcing them to assume climactic roles. Though this produces narrative desire — we read to discover how Max died and what happened in Hannah's childhood — I wonder if the reader would inhabit (haunt?) the characters more fully had these answers arrived earlier. Wyld's sharp story of living doesn't need traumatic climaxes to make its point. The time to enjoy the love we have is now.
