Assisted dying bill dangerous — Archbishop

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has called the idea of assisted dying “dangerous” and suggested it would lead to a “slippery slope” where more people would feel compelled to have their life ended medically.

The head of the Church of England was speaking with the BBC ahead of the first reading in Parliament of a bill that would give terminally ill people in England and Wales the right to end their lives.

Kim Leadbeater, the MP who intro­duced the bill on Wednesday, told the BBC she disagrees with the archbishop’s “slippery slope” argument, saying their proposal is for people who are terminally ill and suffering at the end of their life.

Polling in recent years has consistently shown 60-75 per cent of the British pub­lic supports such a law.

Forms of assisted dying are legal in several countries around the world – and supporters say the UK could benefit from looking at where those systems have operated best.

But Archbishop Justin Welby told the BBC he believed legalising assisted dying “opens the way to it broadening out, such that people who are not in that situation [terminally ill] asking for this, or feeling pressured to ask for it”.

He and 25 other Church of England bishops and archbishops have seats in the House of Lords and can vote on legislation.

“For 30 years as a priest I’ve sat with people at their bedside. And people have said, ‘I want my mum, I want my daugh­ter, I want my brother to go because this is so horrible,’” he said.

He said that, as a teenager, he had sometimes harboured similar thoughts about his own father in the final years of his life. He also referred to the death of his mother, Jane, 93, last year, saying she had described feeling like a “burden”.

—BBC

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