Scotland’s largest religious group recently had a big vote on assisted dying, and boy was it a close one! The Church of Scotland’s General Assembly decided to stick to their guns and keep on opposing assisted dying, with a final vote of 149-145 against a proposal to change their stance.
Delegates then went on to vote 216-104 in favor of a counter motion that basically said, “Hey, we respect everyone’s opinions, but we’re still gonna say no to assisted dying.” This whole shebang went down during the annual gathering of the church’s 283,000 members in Edinburgh, where they talk about all things related to church stuff.
The debate was apparently “long and emotional,” which I can only imagine means there were a lot of passionate speeches and maybe even a few tears. It all went down near Holyrood, where the Scottish Parliament recently gave the thumbs up to the first stage of assisted dying legislation. So yeah, things were pretty intense at the assembly.
