Archbishop Eamon Martin urges MPs not to back Assisted Dying Bill
DERRY born Archbishop Dr Eamon Martin has called on “Catholics and others” to oppose a controversial proposal to legalise assisted suicide ahead of a House of Commons debate on euthanasia next week.
Dr Martin has written to the North’s 18 MPs about what he described as “the destructive and pessimistic” approach to human life in the Assisted Dying Bill.
He said that if the bill ever became law, the “human, moral, social and medical implications” would be “far-reaching and profound”.
Human progress, he wrote, “is about enhancing the life-supporting care we give to one another in the midst of life’s challenges and difficulties”.
The Archbishop of Armagh tells the MPs: “It can never be about destroying human life or harming another person.
“In opposing this bill, you be making a clear statement that the future of humanity does not lie in a culture of death and the deliberate destruction of another, but in a culture of life and care for one another in which medicine and science are at the service of human dignity, not threats to our very existence.”
Dr Martin said he hoped “Catholics and others” would oppose the bill.
The Assisted Dying Bill is a private member’s bill, sponsored by Labour MP Rob Marris, and seeks to “enable competent adults who are terminally ill to choose to be provided with medically supervised assistance to end their own life”.
It will be debated in the House of Commons on Friday.
The bill proposes licensing doctors to supply lethal drugs to terminally ill patients to enable them to die by suicide.
The British Medical Association and other bodies representing physicians are firmly opposed to the bill.
However, those in favour of assisted suicide argue that it would allow people to choose to die with more dignity.
