Scottish Catholic Observer

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury urged pilgrims at Lourdes last week to lobby their MPs over the assisted suicide bill to be debated in the Commons in September. Bishop Davies told 800 pilgrims that the Bill would be the ‘first step on the road to euthanasia’, adding: “We may only have a matter of weeks to make our voices heard before Parliament decides whether a culture of care or a culture of suicide and eventually of killing prevails.”

In a homily during Mass at the Lourdes grotto, he said that, in a place where the sick and frail are placed at the centre, it is ‘hard to believe that a law of despair is about to be rushed through Parliament’.

“The proposed law for ‘assisted dying’ will remove legal protections for the lives of some of the most vulnerable in our land. It is the first step on the road to euthanasia: the medical killing of some of the weakest members of society,” he said. “By the proposed law, those in our hospitals and care homes will be offered assistance to commit suicide. The very ones who should be accorded the greatest support will be legally offered help towards killing themselves.”

He also said there was ‘good reason to fear that the right to die will quickly become the duty to die.’

“And those who should be most cherished and cared for will increasingly see themselves as an unwanted burden to society,” he said. “Pope Francis frequently reminds us how it is the weakest and most vulnerable who can teach us the most important lessons of life. And he warns us that many societies are in danger of discarding them.”

The bill is identical to that introduced by the assisted suicide campaigner Lord Falconer into the House of Lords last year except for a requirement for a High Court judge to approve applications for suicide within a fortnight of them being made.

Prime Minister David Cameron has expressed his personal opposition to the Bill but has granted members of the Conservative Party a free vote when it comes before the House of Commons.

The bill is opposed by the British Medical Association, all of the royal medical colleges and by an overwhelming proportion of GPs. All major disability rights groups are also opposed to the bill.

MSPs rejected a separate attempt to legalise assisted suicide in Scotland earlier this year.