A DOCTORS’ lobby group has urged Scottish politicians to carry a bill to legalise assisted suicide on behalf of an MSP who died earlier this year.

Independent Margo MacDonald passed away surrounded by her family in April after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease.

But campaigners with Doctors for Assisted Suicide urged her fellow MSPs yesterday to carry on her crusading work for legalised euthanasia.

Secretary Gillian MacDougall told backbenchers on Holyrood’s Health and Sport Committee that patients deserved a choice about when and how they died.

“Making assisted suicide legal gives doctors the opportunity to support patients to make that choice and thereby improves the care that we can offer,” she said.

“This choice should not be denied to the few people to whom it would give immense comfort.”

The Bill’s safeguards would reduce the danger of “inappropriate pressure,” she added.