Church leaders from across the denominational spectrum have united in opposition to Lord Joffe’s assisted dying bill, as the findings of the Lords select committee on assisted dying are introduced for debate in the House of Lords Monday.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was joined by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, and the Anglican Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev Richard Harries, in voicing opposition to the bill, which Lord Joffe plans to introduce late this month or early November.The Archbishop of Canterbury backed the Church of England’s profound opposition to assisted suicide, despite watching his mother’s slow, painful death.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Dr Williams described sitting with his mother, Nancy, in the final months of dementia. He said, however, that he was still opposed to assisted dying “chiefly on the grounds of my religious commitments – the conviction that life is a gift from God that we cannot treat as a possession of our own to keep or throw away as we choose”.
He continued: I sat by my mother in her last painful months of decline and dementia. I should be the last person to understate what this feels like, or to deny that in such circumstances you can find yourself desperately wishing for it all to be over.
“But I don’t know now how much this had to do with my own distress and feeling of helplessness.”
Lord Joffe announced he may drop the most controversial proposals in his proposed bill, which would legalise euthanasia, in order to garner more support.
He was quoted in The Herald as saying on Sunday: “I am thinking of limiting the bill to physician-assisted suicide and not seeking for it to include voluntary euthanasia.”
The 73-year-old Lord Joffe referred to the case of Oregan, U.S., where physician-assisted suicide, in which the doctor simply prescribes the drugs for the patients to take themselves, has already been introduced and which he described as working very well.Life is a gift from God that we cannot treat as a possession of our own to keep or throw away as we choose.
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams
The Christian Medical Fellowship, which represents 5,000 UK doctors, however, issued a stern warning to parliament and the public not to be deceived by moves to legalise physician-assisted dying.
