The Archbishop of Westminster has urged Catholics in Great Britain to engage in a public debate as an assisted suicide bill is introduced in Parliament this coming week.
According to the BBC, a member of Parliament from the Labour Party, Kim Leadbeater, is proposing a bill that would give terminally ill persons in England and Wales the “right to end their life.”
“The details have not been finalized but the bill is expected to be similar to one introduced in the House of Lords in July 2024, under which terminally ill adults with six months or less to live would be able to be given medical help to end their own lives,” the BBC said.
That would be a mistake, says Cardinal Vincent Nichols in a pastoral letter issued October 10. The archbishop of Westminster makes three points about the danger of such a law.
First, in every country in which such a law has been passed, the circumstances in which the taking of a life is permitted are continually widened, making assisted suicide and medical killing, or euthanasia, more and more available and accepted.
“In this country, assurances will be given that the proposed safeguards are firm and reliable. Rarely has this been the case,” the cardinal warns.
Duty to die
The second point Nichols makes is that a “right to die” can become a duty to die.
“A law that prohibits an action is a clear deterrent. A law that permits an action changes attitudes: that which is permitted is often and easily encouraged,” the cardinal writes. “Once assisted suicide is approved by the law, a key protection of human life falls away. Pressure mounts on those who are nearing death, from others or even from themselves, to end their life in order to take away a perceived burden of care from their family, for the avoidance of pain, or for the sake of an inheritance.”
Finally, he says, “being forgetful of God belittles our humanity.”
“The questions raised by this bill go to the very heart of how we understand ourselves, our lives, our humanity,” Cardinal Nichols writes. “For people of faith in God – the vast majority of the population of the world – the first truth is that life, ultimately, is a gift of the Creator. Our life flows from God and will find its fulfillment in God. … To ignore or deny this truth is to separate our humanity from its origins and purpose. We are left, floating free, detached, in a sphere that lacks firm anchors or destiny, thinking that we can create these for ourselves according to the mood of the age, or even of the day.”
Another bishop in England, Philip Egan of Portsmouth, also issued a statement about the bill, saying legalizing assisted suicide puts intolerable pressure on the sick and the elderly, according to Crux.
