LOCAL MP Karen Lumley says she is in favour of the Assisted Dying Bill – and will vote for it if she is in Parliament when it is debated today (Friday, September 11).
The Redditch MP is due to meet the region’s education commissioner Pank Patel on the same day to discuss the introduction of the two-tier system into Redditch school with the heads of local secondary schools.
However she said she had no qualms about the measure which would allow doctors to help terminally ill patients to die in certain circumstances.
“I have had a lot of correspondence on this but it is something I feel quite strongly about. I do not think it is right that people who can afford to can just go off to Switzerland to end their lives.
“I’m a Christian and there will be strong safeguards in place but I think it’s the right thing to do.”
However Reverend Paul Lawlor, vicar of St Stephens and town centre chaplain called for caution on the issue.
“This Bill is very much the triumph of the individual, but what we are saying is that we facilitate someone to commit suicide and suicide leaves people with a lot of guilt, and I’m not sure that’s a sensible place to put ourselves.
“People take their own lives because of other pressures – either pain in themselves or perceived pressure from others and I do not think that we as human beings are equipped to take those decisions.
“We have enough choices in our lives that we find difficult to take – how are we meant to make the decision ‘should I live or should I die’?”
However he added that if a person was being kept alive by machine or some other process, the situation changes.
“If it’s a case of that being withdrawn and seeing what happens, then I think that is a different matter,” he said.
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