By Steve Doughty and Fay Schlesinger
Last updated at 1:47 PM on 02nd February 2010
I applaud the Archbishop for taking a stand....all too often the church remains silent on these important issues.
Dr Sentamu: Attack on celebrity-driven campaign
Mercy killing is being legalised on the back of a celebrity-driven campaign and without reference to Parliament, the Archbishop of York claimed yesterday.
Dr John Sentamu condemned the current bandwagon of fashionable opinion seeking to allow relatives to help the sick and dying commit suicide without fear of prosecution.
He spoke out on the day of a high-profile pro-euthanasia intervention by bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett along with the publication of two opinion polls suggesting a backing for reform.
Referring to the polls, the Archbishop said: 'The silent majority never get asked. One thousand people out of about 61million really is not very much guidance.
'Once you begin to open this particular door, it won't be long before you start having mercy killings. I would rather listen to the voices of disabled people than to the voices of celebrities or the voices of 1,000 people in an opinion poll.'
He said that Parliament has twice rejected laws to legalise assisted dying, yet a euthanasia law appears to be on the way on the back of a campaign composed of celebrity endorsements and opinion polls.
The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, QC, will produce his final guidelines on assisted suicide within the next five weeks.
They are likely to say that nobody will be prosecuted for helping someone to kill themselves if they acted in response to the sick or disabled individual's request and if they stood to make no personal gain.
More...SIR TERRY PRATCHETT: When the time comes I'll sit on my lawn, brandy in hand and Thomas Tallis on my iPod. And then I'll shake hands with Death
The DPP has written his rules in response to a request from the Law Lords, who decided that the Human Rights Act means that people should know when they face a risk of prosecution for helping with a suicide.
Over the past week a powerful campaign to make assisted suicide legal has built up, fuelled by a series of interviews with Kay Gilderdale, the devoted mother cleared of attempted murder after she admitted assisting in the suicide of her 31-year- old daughter, who was paralysed by ME.
Yesterday the campaign was boosted by a speech by author Sir Terry, given the platform of the prestigious Richard Dimbleby Lecture by the BBC to call for legal tribunals with the power to decide who should be allowed to end their lives.
And two opinion polls asserted that three out of four people believe relatives should be allowed to help terminally ill loved ones to die. One poll for BBC1's Panorama, carried out by ComRes, said 73 per cent think family or friends should not have to fear prosecution if they help a loved one to die.
It said 74 per cent think doctors should be able to help patients end their lives.
A poll by YouGov for the Daily Telegraph said 80 per cent of 2,053 people questioned thought relatives should not be prosecuted for helping the terminally ill in their wish to die.
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But detailed arguments against assisted suicide submitted to Mr Starmer by churches, MPs and disability lobby groups have failed to win publicity.
Peers voted by 194 to 141 in July to reject a law that would have removed the threat of prosecution from those who help dying relatives travel abroad to die. Assisted dying laws were also rejected in the Lords in 2006, and the Commons has not debated the mater in recent years.
The Suicide Act of 1961 makes it a crime to help someone kill themself, with a maximum jail sentence of 14 years. Yet since 2003 more than 100 people have gone to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich to die and not one of the relatives who helped them has been prosecuted.
Mr Starmer's guidelines, published in draft form in September, say there should be no prosecution when the victim wanted to die and had asked for help to do so; where they had a terminal disease or incurable disability; where the person who helped them to die was motivated entirely by compassion; and where the assistance came from a spouse, partner, or close relative or friend.
But the Church of England says there could be no good safeguards against abuse of a right-to-die law.
And MPs of the all-party pro-life group said Mr Starmer's
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247860/Assisted-suicide-Archbishop-York-condemns-celebrity-campaign.html#ixzz0eODT0TCn
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