The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, has warned people to “be careful what you wish for” as British MPs prepare to debate a new bill to allow assisted suicide. Source: The Tablet.
He fears that a “right to die” will inevitably become a “duty to die” and that pressure will build on the vulnerable to end their lives to ease the burden on carers or protect an inheritance.
“The radical change in the law now being proposed risks bringing about for all medical professionals a slow change from a duty to care to a duty to kill,” he said.
In a pastoral letter read out in parishes this weekend, he said the new bill to be introduced to the British Parliament on Wednesday proposing a change in the law to permit assisted suicide “puts in the spotlight crucial questions about the dignity of human life and the care and protection afforded by our society to every human being”.
Urging people to write to their MPs, he says: “Be careful what you wish for. 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.
“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.”
The bill would give terminally ill people in England and Wales the right to end their lives. The issue was last voted on in 2015, when MPs rejected it, with 118 votes for and 330 against.
Last week other UK church and pro-life leaders warned Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer that the plans will put vulnerable people at risk.
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‘Be careful what you wish for’ warns cardinal as MPs prepare to debate assisted suicide (By Ruth Gledhill, The Tablet)
