Right to Life

(Right to Life and Passion for Life Campaign led by Lord Alton of Liverpool is seeking to get the electorate to get answers from all parliamentary candidates in the forthcoming election on important pro life issues and to vote accordingly).

Right to Life is a political lobby group defending the right to life from conception to natural death. It works more closely with Pro Life Parliamentarians and the All Party Parliamentary Pro Life Group than any other political lobby group defending the Right to Life from conception to natural death. It’s recent campaigns have been on the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act, campaigning against the production of human embryos, hybrid (animal/human) embryos, saviour siblings and defending the child’s right to a father.

More recently RTL raised awareness and lobbied Peers to vote against an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill that would have assisted suicide.

The organisation is now opposing the Director of Public Prosecutions’ Guidelines on Assisted Suicide which they consider overrules the Primacy of Parliament in legalising assisted suicide.

RTL documents and records how MPs vote on all life issues, so that interested parties can find out how their MPs have voted.

The RTL lobby group also has a separate Trust - please see their website here.

The Right to Life Charitable Trust works to help some of the most vulnerable members of our society. They provide support for pregnant women in difficult circumstances and work for the sick and the elderly: people who find themselves in need and have nowhere else to turn. They have also financed a number of cases where families have been concerned about the hospital treatment received by relatives at the end of life.

HFE bill; The results!

In the House of Commons on Wednesday evening (22nd Oct), MPs voted for the HFE bill, and all the devastating effects it will have on the sanctity and dignity of human life. However, there is some good news. The government had come under enormous pressure not to change the abortion law, event though many extreme backbench pro-abortion MPs had been pushing for a mass liberalisation of the law for months. The Passion for Life campaign would like to thank all it's supporters for distributing almost 2million postcards, attending public meetings the length and bread of the UK, emailing, writing, phoning MPs, and making it very clear indeed that the public do not want more liberalisation of the abortion act. On the votes that took place, here's how your MP voted. Please make sure you drop them a line to thank them if they voted how you wanted, or to express your disapointment if they didn't!

Euthanasia

Euthanasia

The information below sets out some of the arguments for and against Euthanasia.

REASONS FOR People have a right to decide when they want to die. Wrong to keep people alive beyond their natural life span (e.g. life support machine). Gives people the ability to die with dignity. Relatives spared the agony of watching their loved ones suffer a slow and painful death. Jesus said – ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you’. If you were suffering you may want your life to end. REASONS AGAINST People might commit euthanasia against a person’s wishes. People might recover from an illness against all odds. Doctor’s diagnosis might be wrong. Christians believe in the Sanctity of Life. Against Commandment ‘Do not kill’. Jesus suffered on the cross – he didn’t cut short his suffering therefore not down to us to end our life. Doctors are against euthanasia it is their job to try and save & protect life. Some people think accepting suffering may have a spiritual value for your soul. Jesus cared for the sick, he never talks about any type of euthanasia Christians have Hospices – hospitals where the terminally ill are cared for, without losing their dignity.

A short stay in Switzerland

When Dr Anne Turner chose to end her own life in a Swiss clinic it was front-page news.

The retired doctor had a degenerative neurological condition called progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP).

She knew she faced a slow death, becoming less and less able to communicate with her carers and loved ones.

This weekend her story 'A short stay in Switzerland' is brought to the small screen by award winning writer Frank McGuiness and starring Julie Walters, as Anne.

Assisted suicide

Writer Frank McGuinness said: "As a doctor Anne Turner lived and worked by her principles, and she chose to die by them. This film recognises that rare courage."

Julie Walters said taking on the role had been a challenge.

"I felt a great deal of responsibility to get the character of Anne right. But the script was fantastic and her personality just jumped off the page. Anne was clearly a remarkable woman who was determined not to be a victim."

Dr Turner's son, Edward, said his mother had been determined to die, but that because of UK law had been unable to do so at home. He and his family are now campaigning for a change in the law to allow physician-assisted suicide in the UK.

But he stressed the programme was not a polemic for assisted suicide and that he hoped that it would be watched by people with a broad spectrum of beliefs, allowing them to make up their own minds while exploring the concept of death.

I hope it will help people talk about death  Edward Turner The BBC's Fergus Walsh recounts his nerve-wracking role

"If you were writing a polemic you would not chose all the details of this story," he said.

"Our mother was relatively able-bodied when she went off to Switzerland and would never have been able to have an assisted death in the UK. Also the final death scene was not easy.

"She was choking a bit because the barbiturates went down the wrong way.

"It is not a really peaceful ending. "It is traumatic and difficult."

But he said: "The audience will make up their own mind whether assisted dying is right or wrong.

"It does show the desperation people have when faced with terrible symptoms. I hope it will help people talk about death. If we don't, we are going to condemn ourselves to bad deaths,

"My mum would be delighted that people are talking about the issue, but embarrassed that she had become a key figure in the debate about assisted dying."

Reluctant to help

Edward, a board member of the campaign group Dignity in Dying, which supports assisted suicide, said that as a doctor his mother had been very well aware of how her illness would progress and that having nursed her husband through a similar terminal condition she knew she wanted to end her own life.

"My immediate reaction was to say 'I am so sorry and of course you will have my full support'.

"Well that's what I said, but what I thought was that there was absolutely no way I was going to let my mother take her own life.

"She is the most precious thing to me and it is just not going to happen.

"But I do think PSP is one of the worst things you can get.

Dr Turner had a degenerative neurological condition

"I think when you look at what happens she would have lost the ability to move any muscle in her body.

"She would have just been lying in her bed waiting for death, but her brain would have been OK.

"It was incredibly difficult for the family because we are all selfish human beings and want the people we love to hang around as long as possible no matter what condition they are in, but the only person that benefits is us."

Suicide attempt

His sister Sophie said that it was their mum's attempted suicide in 2006 that convinced them that she was serious.

"I could not face her trying that again or trying something similar depending on how desperate she would get so we talked about Dignitas.

"I called them when she was unconscious and by the time she woke up I wanted her to have an alternative in place."

She said she hoped the film would give people a little taste of their experiences.

Dr Turner went to Switzerland to die

"I thought if people can just get a snapshot of what we went through then maybe it will help people understand a bit better why we supported our mother and what she went through, and what my father went through.

"We do everything throughout life to relieve suffering all the way through life and when it comes to neurological illnesses when you could end up with a fully functioning brain and a useless body.

"No amount of palliative care is going to relieve those symptoms, so I think that is why they should be given the option to die if they want to - and a lot of people don't want to.

"My mother's life was cut short because she was worried that she would not be well enough to leave the country that she left while she had some quality of life left.

"I think if she knew that at any stage she would have been able to go to her doctor and have the procedure in the UK that she would have held on for longer."

'A Short Stay in Switzerland' - is on Sunday 25th January, BBC1, 9pm. It will be shown in Scotland on BBC2 at 10pm the same day.

Care not killing

"HARD CASES MAKE BAD LAW"

The Suicide Tourist

The Suicide Tourist is due to be broadcast by Sky Television on 10th December. Although we have not been able to preview the programme, we understand that the Canadian film director, John Zaritsky, follows Craig Ewert - a 59 year old American with motor neurone disease - on a journey to the Dignitas suicide facility in Zurich where he is filmed ending his life.

By choosing to broadcast this film, Sky Television has irresponsibly taken us a further step down the slippery slope of euthanasia voyeurism. This case will no doubt be seized upon by the pro-euthanasia lobby in order to create the impression that there is a growing demand for "assisted dying" and thereby to prompt Parliament to revisit the law in this country.

However, all UK medical bodies including the BMA and all medical royal colleges, remain firmly opposed to a change in the law. The House of Lords rejected an attempt to legalise assisted suicide, after an extensive review, in 2006.

Persistent requests for assisted suicide remain extremely rare when people are properly cared for and our priority must always be to make the excellent palliative care already available in this country much more widely accessible.

Paradoxically, publicity is being given to assisted suicide at a time when the Government is implementing an end of life care strategy that will provide much more comprehensive care and support for dying people through addressing their physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs.

The disproportionate media coverage given to a very small handful of persistent people, desperate to end their lives, creates the false impression that there is a growing demand for assisted dying; but the hundred people who have travelled to Zurich for assisted suicide over the last five years should be compared to greater than 3 million deaths that have occurred in Britain during the same period. Fewer than one in 30,000 dying British people seem to want to make use of this facility, demonstrating that the demand is coming just from a very small number of determined individuals.

A spokesperson for Care Not Killing said:

Care Not Killing remains strongly opposed to any change in the law to allow assisted suicide believing that such a change would place pressure on vulnerable people – the elderly, disabled, depressed, terminally or chronically ill – to request assisted death. This will only intensify the pressure felt by such people, whether real or imagined, to contemplate taking their lives for fear of being a burden upon loved ones, carers or a society that is short of resources.

At such a time we should be investing more resources into good care, ensuring proper protection in law for the vulnerable, strengthening families and communities and resisting the temptation to give more of a media platform to pro-euthanasia activists and a very small number of desperate people who, despite the offer of palliative care, are determined to end their lives.

As members of a democratic society we accept that there are limits to personal freedom and that for reasons of public safety, we must have laws to protect the most vulnerable. Hard cases make bad laws and the right-to-die could so easily become a duty-to-die.

We encourage the media to pay more attention to educating a largely misinformed public about the huge difference that good palliative care can make to dying people. The media should give more of a platform to those representing the majority of terminally ill, disabled and chronically ill people who, with the right support and care, manage to maintain a positive outlook on their lives and so choose assisted living rather than assisted dying.

Care Not Killing

Notes for Editors

Care Not Killing is a UK-based alliance bringing together around 50 organisations - human rights and disability rights organisations, health care and palliative care groups, faith-based organisations groups - and thousands of concerned individuals.

We have three key aims:

• to promote more and better palliative care;
• to ensure that existing laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are not weakened or repealed during the lifetime of the current Parliament;
• to inform public opinion further against any weakening of the law.

We seek to attract the broadest support among health care professionals, allied health services and others opposed to euthanasia by campaigning on the basis of powerful arguments underpinned by the latest, well-researched and credible evidence.

Key groups signed up to Care Not Killing include: The Association for Palliative Medicine, the United Kingdom Disabled People's Council, RADAR, the Christian Medical Fellowship, the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, the Church of England and the Medical Ethics Alliance.

White Flower emblem

A scandal of contemporary British society is the abortion industry and the euthanasia lobby.
SPUC - Society for the Protection of Unborn Children is the main Christian opposition with the following aims:

1. To affirm, defend and promote the existence and value of human life from the moment of conception until natural death, and to protect human life whether born or unborn.
2. To reassert the principle laid down in the United Nation's "Declaration of the Rights of the Child"(1959) that "the child by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.
3. To defend, assist and promote the life and welfare of mothers during pregnancy and of their unborn children from the time of conception.

This week, in the parish, is local White Flower Appeal on behalf of the society.

In Germany during World War II Sophie Scholl and her young student friends formed The White Rose Movement and helped to alert Germans to the inhumane policies of that time. The six leaders of the movement were arrested, tried and executed between February and October 1943. Their inspiring story is told in the film "Sophie Scholl".

SPUC's White Flower emblem remains a symbol of the struggle for justice on behalf of the vulnerable humans affected by the inhumane practices of abortion and euthanasia today.

In addition to political and educational work SPUC offers the following services:

1. British Victims of Abortion for men and women hurt by abortion.

2. No Less Human for disabled people, their families and carers - taking a positive position on disability.

3. Patients First Network for vulnerable people at risk from euthanasia.

4. Safe at School for parents and teachers concerned about anti-life education in schools.