Bishops in UK speak out against legalizing assisted suicide, urging others to do the same

The issue of euthanasia will be proposed to Parliament in the UK this week, and the local Roman Catholic bishops are speaking out in strong opposition. 

As the BBC reports, Parliament is scheduled to hear arguments to give people in England and Wales — who have a terminal illness and less than six months to live — the option of ending their own lives. A similar measure was last rejected in 2015, with 300 MPs voting against the bill and 118 for it. However, since the Labour Party swept recent elections, they have decided to revisit the issue and push a more radical agenda, and the “Choice at the End of Life Bill” received its first reading on October 16th. 

That is why Cardinal Vincent Nichols is raising the alarm for his flock, poignantly warning that a so-called “right” to die can easily become a “duty to die.” 

“A law which prohibits an action is a clear deterrent. A law which permits an action changes attitudes: That which is permitted is often and easily encouraged. Once assisted suicide is approved by the law, a key protection of human life falls away,” Cardinal Nichols said in a statement that was read in the diocese this past weekend, according to Crux. 

“No doubt the bill put before Parliament will be carefully framed, providing clear and very limited circumstances in which it would become lawful to assist, directly and deliberately, in the ending of a person’s life,” he said. “But please remember, the evidence from every single country in which such a law has been passed is clear: That the circumstances in which the taking of a life is permitted are widened and widened, making assisted suicide and medical killing, or euthanasia, more and more available and accepted.”

Euthanasia advocates almost always start by insisting that legalization of assisted suicide will be limited to rare terminal cases with strict safeguards, but over two decades of observing how euthanasia plays out in various countries – The Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, and even several U.S. states – tell a different story. The fact is that in every country where medically assisted suicide has been permitted, it has always expanded beyond its original “safeguards,” with euthanasia activists progressively demanding a loosening of those safeguards, usually under the guise of a false compassion.  

READ: Disability groups file challenge against Canada’s assisted suicide law

Right to Life UK notes:

The introduction of the Bill comes as many elderly people go into winter with their Winter Fuel Payment cut by the Government, as palliative care services are in crisis with 100,000 people dying each year needing palliative care but not receiving it, and a wider healthcare system also in a state of crisis, with Labour’s own Health Secretary describing the NHS as “broken”.

No major disability advocate groups in the UK – including Disability Rights UK, Scope and Not Dead Yet – support a change in the law to introduce assisted suicide or euthanasia.

No doctors’ groups in the UK support changing the law to introduce assisted suicide or euthanasia, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Physicians, the British Geriatric Society, and the Association for Palliative Medicine.

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury also put out urgent messages to his diocese, raising the concern that the bill will remove the safeguards which protected  “some of the most vulnerable members of society to allow medically assisted suicide.”

“The decision MPs are about to make is heralded as a historic vote because it threatens a momentous change to society in both its care and attitude to the sick and the aged. This change could be decided within a matter of weeks, allowing our parliamentary representatives little time to consider the enormity of the moral choice,” said Bishop Davies according to Crux.

Bishop Davies is urging his congregations to contact their MPs to take urgent action against the bill and, importantly, “to urge that greater support and resources be given to end of life, palliative care.”

Bishop Davies also pointed out the parallels between this bill and its inevitable expansion, and the Abortion Act of 1967 which, he said, was initially enacted to deal with the hard cases but has been used to justify abortions up to 24 weeks or later if there was risk to a mother’s health (even though abortion is not health care and is never medically necessary). 

“As we see populations ageing across western countries with a diminished number of younger people to support them, this is an especially dangerous moment for politicians to open the door to euthanasia: The medical killing of the sick, the disabled and the elderly,” Bishop Davies said.  

“We already hear of a social duty to end our lives when we become a burden to others. This is not the kind of society in which we would wish to grow old or become vulnerable!” Davies continued. “If medical professionals, now sworn to protect the lives of patients, become those who assist in killing and suicide, how will our relationship change to those we look to for help and care?” 

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