There has been much media discussion of the legalisation of assisted suicide following the January 2010 attempted prosecution of Kay Gilderdale for assisting her daughter's suicide and the September 2009 guidelines on prosecuting assisted suicide issued by Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions. The Plymouth Diocese is opposed to legalising assisted suicide because it would harm the very people it would claim to assist. There are a great many non-Christians who argue as we do though, for ourselves, we hold this as a part of our Catholic faith.

Assisted suicide is harmful because:

• It confirms the mistaken impression that the life of the person attempting suicide is no longer to be valued. People contemplating suicide need to be shown that they are valued rather than being led to believe that they are no longer valuable. This is especially important if someone is sick or disabled or otherwise likely to be underappreciated.
• Assisting people who wish to commit suicide demeans them by cooperating in a process that implies their life has lost value. Such assistance demeans them even if it is something they wish for themselves. It is false compassion to co-operate with someone's wishes in a way that demeans their value. It is similarly a mistaken respect for someone's autonomy to help them do something that contradicts their intrinsic value.
• If assisted suicide is legalised for sick and disabled people it will result in other sick and disabled people feeling that they should die to stop ‘being a burden' to others. This thus demeans other sick and disabled people.
• Legalising assisted suicide will result in diminished care for the sick because the emphasis will inevitably shift to termination of life rather than care for people in their final stages of life. In this context doctors would cease to be people we could trust to always act to improve our health.
• If we allow assisted suicide, then we remove the arguments against the killing of those in similar situations who cannot express their wishes.

In addition, as Christians, we hold that assisted suicide is wrong because:

• No one has a right to take their own life because life is a gift from God and we only hold it as stewards.
• Taking one's life prevents one from spiritually preparing for death properly because it unduly hastens our final encounter with the Creator.

However, we do not hold that life must be preserved as all costs:

• Sometimes treatment is disproportionate because the treatment is more burdensome than the gain hoped for from it. In such cases we should accept the inevitability of death while making the patient as comfortable as possible. Accepting death is not the same as causing or hastening it.

Further information about the Catholic perspective on this matter is available at these and other websites:

http://www.catholicchurch.org.uk/catholic_church/legislation_and_public_policy
http://www.linacre.org/newsle~1.htm
http://www.spuc.org.uk/news/releases/2009/september23  
http://www.carenotkilling.org.uk/?show=707

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