Assisted suicide ideology is Nazism, says Bishop Egan as he urges Catholics to fight Bill

The Bishop of Portsmouth has today urged the people of his diocese to ask their MPs to vote against assisted suicide, warning them that the ideology behind the practice is comparable to Nazism.

In a pastoral letter called Thou Shalt Not Kill, the Rt Rev. Philip Egan, said assisted suicide was gravely immoral, an offence against God, and “evil masquerading as kindness”.

He told the faithful that their failure to mobilise against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would be to “capitulate to the very ideology Britain fought against in the Second World War”.

“If we yield to this and permit killing, we will cross a line from which there is no return,” he said. “Like using nuclear weapons, once deployed, it’s too late – there’s only escalation.”

His letter, which was to be read out at Mass in all churches and chapels, comes ahead of a crunch vote on the Private Member’s Bill tabled by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP for Spen Valley.

The Second Reading in the House of Commons on November 29 will be the first time MPs will have a free vote on assisted suicide since 2015 when a Bill introduced by Labour MP Rob Marris was rejected by 330 to 118.

In his letter, Bishop Egan said assisted suicide would put “intolerable pressure on the most vulnerable, upon the sick, the elderly, the disabled, the dying”.

“It would tempt them to feel they are an increasing burden and a financial drain on their family and others,” he said. “In other words, the right to die inescapably becomes a pressure to die and then a duty to die.

“To legalise assisted suicide would completely undermine palliative care and the work of care-homes,” he continued.

“It could spell the end of hospices, since it would be cheaper, more efficient and far less trouble to kill someone – or to permit them to kill themselves – than to care for them and generously fund their care.

“Assisted suicide would place an unacceptable and immoral demand on medical staff, expecting them to become accessories to killing. It would undermine the trust we normally place in doctors, making us suspicious of their motives.

“It would darken the atmosphere of medical wards that care for the elderly, and it would inexorably lead to euthanasia, the right to make another person die, when difficult cases need to be decided by consultants and relatives, or lawyers and the courts … It’s easy to imagine a future in which doctors advise patients to seek suicide rather than treatment.”

Bishop Egan also warned the faithful against the reality of the “slippery slope”, reminding them that eligibility criteria have rapidly expanded in every jurisdiction were assisted suicide and euthanasia have become legal.

He said experience showed that doctor-assisted death would soon be offered to the mentally ill, dementia patients, disabled people and sick children.

“There are no limits, and fixed safeguards are unworkable,” the bishop said, adding that one politician in Guernsey, a Channel island in his diocese, had recently argued that “considerable savings could be realised” if assisted suicide were introduced.

“Suicide, free on the NHS, would in time become socially acceptable, normal,” he said. “Assisted suicide and euthanasia only opens the door to abuse. If we love and care for someone, efficiency and cost-saving is irrelevant. How can helping someone to kill themselves be compassionate?”

Bishop Egan also told Catholics that assisted suicide and euthanasia are gravely sinful.

He said: “When suicide is done with full knowledge and deliberate consent, as in an assisted suicide, it is clearly a mortal sin.

“Likewise assisting someone kill themselves is also a mortal sin. How would it be possible to offer them the Last Sacraments?

“What justification could a person make when, crossing into eternity after death, they meet the living God to give an account of their life – and their death?”

Bishop Egan is the latest in a series of high-ranking prelates to urge Catholics to lobby their MPs to vote against the Bill.

In a pastoral letter earlier this month, Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster, the president of the bishops’ conference, said assisted suicide would precipitate a “change from a duty to care to a duty to kill”.

Archbishop Mark O’Toole of Cardiff-Menevia, in his pastoral letter, also raised concerns over the real danger that assisted suicide would be impossible to control.

“The history of such legislation shows that once permission is given for one set of circumstances, it will soon be extended,” he said. “I urge you to write to, or email, your local MP, to express your concerns about the bill.”

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury said the Bill threatened “a momentous change to society in both its care and attitude to the sick and the aged”.

In a pastoral letter, he urged Catholics “not to delay” in writing to MPs to ask them to oppose the “dark and sinister path” towards a society in which the medical profession will be asked to assist in the killing of their patients.

“As we see populations ageing across western countries with a diminished number of younger people to support them, this is an especially dangerous moment for politicians to open the door to euthanasia: the medical killing of the sick, the disabled and the elderly,” he said.

“We already hear of a social duty to end our lives when we become a burden to others. This is not the kind of society in which we would wish to grow old or become vulnerable.”

The Bill seeks to permit terminally ill patients deemed to have less than a year to live to kill themselves with lethal drugs prescribed by their doctors.

Already, a group of more than 50 MPs say the safeguards are too tight and are pushing for broader access to assisted suicide, arguing that that it should be available to anyone arguing that they are suffering incurably.

Ahead of the general election in July, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, promised Esther Rantzen, a celebrity TV presenter suffering from cancer, that an assisted suicide Bill would be brought forward.

At present the 1961 Suicide Act makes assisting a suicide punishable by up to 14 years in prison, though prosecutions and jail sentences are extremely rare.

(Photo © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk)

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