Noting that Britain founded the modern hospice movement, an English bishop says a proposal to legalise assisted suicide could lead to “a gradual decline in funding for palliative care”. Source: Crux.
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is being discussed in the British Parliament.
Although new Prime Minister Keir Starmer has supported legalising assisted suicide, he has offered members of parliament a “free vote” on the issue.
Nottingham Bishop Patrick McKinney said on Sunday that the bill “has the potential to initiate a paradigm shift in how we understand, value, and protect the sacredness of every human life, and so to profoundly affect the very fabric of our society”.
“Laws to legalise assisted suicide strike at the foundation of the legal order; the right to life sustains all other rights, including the exercise of freedom,” Bishop McKinney said.
“While real and emotional descriptions of painful suffering in dying and death resonate powerfully with all of us, the ardent desires of a few cannot outweigh our obligations to the greater common good, which includes protecting the lives of all, especially the most vulnerable,” the bishop continued.
Bishop McKinney says palliative care constitutes “a precious and crucial instrument in the care of patients during the terminal stages of illness”.
Palliative care improves the quality of life of patients who have a serious or life-threatening disease, such as cancer, and can be given with or without curative care.
Supported by the Church, palliative care is seen as an approach to care that addresses the person as a whole, not just their disease.
“Britain founded the modern hospice movement, and so it a very sad reflection on our society that access to hospice care is a postcode lottery, and that hospices in this country are so poorly funded and so heavily reliant upon charitable donations,” Bishop McKinney said.
Right to Life UK says 82 per cent of palliative care doctors oppose the introduction of assisted suicide.
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English bishop says Assisted Suicide Bill will lead to decline in palliative care (By Charles Collins, Crux)
