A massive campaign to prevent the legislation of ‘assisted suicide’ has been spearheaded this week by the Roman Catholic Church together with Church of England bishops.

|TOP|The Roman Catholic Church distributed more than half a million anti-euthanasia leaflets and DVDs to each of their parishes in England and Wales in what is the biggest political campaign by the Church yet.

Anglicans also came to the fore against Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, up for discussion in the House of Lords in May, by urging Christians up and down the country to lobby MPs and Peers to oppose the Bill and prevent it from becoming law.

The Bill “strikes at the very heart of our society and could increase pressure upon the most vulnerable,” the Bishop of St Albans, Christopher Herbert, warned in the Church of England Newspaper.

Bishop Herbert, the leading Anglican bishop on euthanasia, said that no one should have to suffer unbearably at the end of their lives but stressed that measures to improve palliative care were the solution to the problem.

|AD|“Instead of a counsel of despair, we should be arguing strongly and passionately for the investment of more resources in the training and provision of palliative care specialists. Killing is no substitute for caring,” he wrote in the newspaper.

He also warned that setting the exercise of autonomy and choice as the highest moral good was a deeply flawed basis on which to organise society.

Bishop Herbert also warned that the assisted dying Bill was one step on the road to euthanasia and that the doctor-patient relationship, as well as family relationships, would be deeply damaged if the Bill is approved.

“If we legalise assisted suicide it could imply that some people’s lives have less worth and value than others.”

The Bishop of Hereford, Anthony Priddis, also came out to oppose the Bill by urging churchgoers in the Hereford Diocese to be active against the Bill by writing to their MPs expressing their concerns.

He added that the Bill could put unnecessary pressure on patients and their families to take the assisted dying route.

“No one person’s choice is entirely an individual matter,” said Bishop Priddis. “People saying, ‘I don’t want to suffer’ or ‘I don’t want to be a burden’, is perfectly understandable but proper treatment, proper care and proper support for patients and their families in that situation can provide an answer,” he said.

The Archbishop of Cardiff, Rev Peter Smith, who is driving forward the campaign said, “It's all very well for bishops to be giving out instructions, but we need ordinary Catholics to go to peers and MPs and say we do not want this law.”

People supporting the fight against the Bill are being asked to follow meetings organised by priests to mobilise numbers before the House of Lords discusses the Private Member’s Bill, proposed by Lord Joffe in May.