How amazing to have two former Anglican archbishops, George Carey of Canterbury and Desmond Tutu of South Africa, supporting Lord Falconer’s bill to legalise assisted suicide! It has always been, and remains, a firm doctrine of the Church of England that it is wrong to take a life. Yet here are two Church leaders agreeing with a majority of Britons — more than 80 per cent, according to the polls — that it should be legal for a doctor to supply a suffering, terminally ill patient with a lethal dose of poison if he wants it.
Lord Carey said that in changing his mind on this issue he had been deeply influenced by the case of Tony Nicklinson, who suffered from locked-in syndrome after a stroke, which meant that he could only move his eyes and head. He wasn’t able to take his own life (though he did eventually die anyway), but tried and failed in various legal applications to let a doctor do it without facing a murder charge.
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