Church Launches Biggest Political Campaign to Fight Assisted Dying Bill

|TOP|The biggest ever political campaign by the Roman Catholic Church in Britain will be launched this week in the hope of preventing assisted suicide from becoming legalised.

Roman Catholic bishops will send out half a million anti-euthanasia leaflets and DVD’s to parishes across the country to fight against Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill.

The Archbishop of Cardiff, Rev Peter Smith, who is driving forward the campaign said, “It's all very well for bishops to be giving out instructions, but we need ordinary Catholics to go to peers and MPs and say we do not want this law.”

The House of Lords will discuss the Private Member’s Bill, proposed by Lord Joffe in May. The proposals look to allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medicine to terminally ill patients to end their lives.|AD|

Various backers of the Bill believe that people should have a right to choose when they die, even if it means they have to obtain assistance to commit suicide from others.

The Bill has been opposed greatly also by the Church of England as well as other Churches and faith groups, and a new umbrella organisation has been formed called the ‘Care Not Killing Alliance’. Bishops are urging people to join the alliance in support of the growing opposition to the Bill.

A letter by Archbishop Smith will explain to priests that the “purpose of the alliance is to promote more and better palliative care and to oppose moves to introduce euthanasia and assisted suicide.”

He added that bishops were “encouraging as many Catholics as possible to support its work in whatever way they can.”

A supporting 12-page document has been submitted in support, where the bishop explains that “a nurse, a doctor or someone concerned with bereavement care, disability issues or life issues” is made a link person for the alliance in every parish.

People supporting the fight against the Bill are being asked to follow meetings organised by priests to mobilise numbers.