The Bishop of Portsmouth has urged Catholics to actively oppose against the “sinister” forthcoming Bill to legalise assisted suicide.
The Rt Rev. Philip Egan told the Catholics of his diocese that they “must mobilise” against the Private Member’s Bill of Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP for Spen Valley, which will receive its First Reading in the House of Commons on Wednesday 16 October.
“We believe in assisted living, not assisted dying," the bishop said in a message to his diocese. "Investing in palliative care is a better way to support people suffering at the end of life.
"Don’t be seduced by the emotional pitches in the media we will be bombarded with. Correct them when they use the double-speak of ‘assisted dying’: call it what it is: ‘assisted suicide’.
“Speak out against this sinister proposal,” he continued, “and pray earnestly that our legislators and our society will see common sense. For once this line is crossed, our society will never be the same again.”
Bishop Egan told Catholics that UK society would be subjected to a barrage of emotional pressure from the media and from euthanasia campaigners “to persuade us to support a change in the law”.
Ms Leadbeater has stated: “I believe that with the right safeguards and protections in place, people who are already dying and are mentally competent to make a decision should be given the choice of a shorter, less painful death, on their own terms and without placing family and loved ones at risk of prosecution.”
Bishop Egan set out six reasons why the campaign to legalise assisted suicide or euthanasia had to be resisted:
* The option of assisted suicide puts intolerable pressure on the sick and the elderly, tempting them to feel they are a burden – and a financial drain – on their family and others. The right to die would inevitably become the duty to die – and in time the right to make another die.
* To legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide would undermine palliative care – Britain is a world-leader - and the work of care-homes. It would spell the end of care homes as we know them, since it would be cheaper and less trouble to kill someone rather than to care for them. Caring for the dying, looking after them, is true “dignity in dying” - not a lethal injection or a Sarco pod.
* Assisted suicide places an unacceptable and immoral demand on medical staff, doctors and nurses. It would make them accessories in killing. It would also undermine the trust we would normally have in them.
* Once the legislation is passed, like a line in the sand, it will keep creeping forward, expanding to cover more and more categories in accordance with someone else’s viewpoint. This fact is demonstrated in every other country that has legalised assisted suicide and euthanasia. In Canada, five per cent of deaths are now by lethal injection.
* Suicide is a grave offence against God, against neighbour and against self: Against God, Who in His love and providence has given us the gift of our life; so life is not ours to dispose of. Against neighbour because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Against self, because suicide is gravely contrary to the just love of self, contradicting the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his/her life.
* Suicide is not only a grave sin, but if freely, consciously and deliberately chosen as in an assisted suicide, is a mortal sin. Willingly assisting someone to kill themselves in this way is also a mortal sin. How would it be possible to offer the Last Rites? And what justification will the person make when they come before the Lord to give an account of their life – and of their death?
Bishop Egan's intervention comes as scores of MPs, who support Ms Leadbeater, push for the broadest possible access to assisted suicide and euthanasia while the Bill is being drafted.
They say people who are suffering “incurably” should be able to ask for lethal drugs to take their own lives along with those who have terminal illnesses.
In jurisdictions where this has been allowed, people with mental health illnesses, such as anorexia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and autism, have been killed at the hands of their doctors.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, promised an assisted suicide Bill ahead of the general election in July and is expected give the Bill time to proceed into law if the House of Commons votes in favour at a Second Reading in November.
The vote will be the first time MPs will be given a free vote on assisted suicide since 2015 when a Bill introduced by Labour MP Rob Marris was rejected by 330 votes to 118.
At present the 1961 Suicide Act makes assisting a suicide punishable by up to 14 years in jail, though prosecutions and jail sentences are extremely rare.
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<em>Photo: A demonstration outside the Palace of Westminster, home to the Houses of Parliament, protesting against proposals to legalise in the UK assisted suicide, London, England, 29 April 2024. (Photo by BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images.)</em>
