The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that changing the law on assisted dying would put the most vulnerable at risk.
In a significant intervention, the Most Reverend Justin Welby urges anybody with reservations to lobby their MPs to vote against highly contentious reforms to the law.
It comes as an historic Private Member’s Bill is introduced to the House of Commons on Wednesday, with MPs to debate and vote on allowing assisted dying for the first time in a decade.
Writing in the Daily Mail, the Church of England’s most senior bishop said ‘the pressure to end one’s life early would be intense and inescapable’ if the law is reformed.
And, while recognising that the proposed Bill comes ‘from a position of compassion’, Dr Welby warned that ‘we can never be sure that assisted suicide will be safe from abuse’.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that changing the law on assisted dying would put the most vulnerable at risk
Campaigners protest outside Parliament in Westminster, London, ahead of a debate in the House of Commons on assisted dying in April
Pictured: The Sarco suicide pod which was first used in Switzerland last month by an American woman aged 64
Recalling the fears of his late mother that she had become a burden before she passed away last year, the archbishop said that ‘the right to end your life could all too easily – all too accidentally – turn into a duty to do so’.
He added: ‘I worry that even the best intentions can lead to unintended consequences, and that the desire to help our neighbour could, unintentionally, open the door to yet more pain and suffering for those we are trying to help.’
The assisted dying debate returns to Parliament as Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Private Member’s Bill is formally introduced in the House of Commons.
A debate on it next month will mark the first time MPs have voted on the topic for almost a decade.
Mr Welby has previously spoken against assisted dying but his intervention before the Bill’s first reading is significant because he is often seen as a progressive voice in the Church.
The UK’s most senior Roman Catholic last week called on churchgoers to urge their MPs to vote against the proposed bill on assisted dying.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols warned Catholics that it ‘risks bringing about for all medical professionals a slow change from a duty to care to a duty to kill’.
The last time there was a binding vote on changing the law, in 2015, proposed reforms were defeated at the second reading by 330 votes to 118.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised a free vote on the issue this time, meaning MPs can vote with their conscience, rather than along party lines.
In 2023, when he was leader of the Opposition, he said he believed there were ‘grounds for changing the law’, having voted in favour of legalising it in 2015. Polls show that almost two thirds of the public are now in favour of change.
Campaign group Dignity in Dying, which backs reform, says that assisted dying allows a person with a terminal condition to control their own death if their suffering becomes unbearable.
The assisted dying debate returns to Parliament on Wednesday as Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Private Member’s Bill is formally introduced in the House of Commons
Campaigners in support of voluntary euthanasia protest outside Parliament in Westminster in April
But Care Not Killing argues that it would put pressure on the vulnerable to end their lives because they fear being a burden.
The disabled, elderly, sick or depressed, they argue, would be put especially at risk.
Earlier this year Dame Esther Rantzen, diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, revealed that she had signed up to the assisted dying clinic Dignitas in Switzerland.
She too urged people to make their feelings known to their MPs.
‘Explain this is a life and death issue and all we are asking is the right to choose, not to shorten our lives, but to shorten our deaths,’ she said.
