The head of a Christian lobby group is urging MSPs to reject proposals to legalise assisted suicide in Scotland. 

Dr Stuart Weir, director of CARE for Scotland, said that the fresh push for a change to the laws on assisted suicide was "sinister". 

Previous attempts to legalise assisted suicide in Scotland have all fallen in the Scottish Parliament but recent polling suggests strong support among members of the public and earlier this year, a cross-party group said they wanted to see the law changed.

"Don't misunderstand me, there are some terrible degenerative diseases out there and many of our loved ones suffer or have suffered them," Dr Weir wrote in the Scotsman newspaper.

"These conditions are downright miserable and there is no questioning that."

He continued: "Previously our MSPs have batted such cases out of the park and rightly so. To be a caring and compassionate Scotland we needed to reject such a move." 

Dr Weir also expressed concern that Scotland's ageing population was being wrongly seen as a burden and that older people were being pushed further down the "pecking order" in favour of younger people when it came to accessing essential services like the NHS. 

"Only a good society understands that its valour is tested by how well we care for our aged, the ones who have been there before us," he said.

Dr Weir went on to criticise the Scottish Government's decision to allow women to take the abortion drug misoprostol at home. 

An appeal against the decision by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children was recently defeated in court.

Dr Weir raised concerns about the welfare of women terminating their pregnancies at home "without the wisdom of physicians for their safety" but also questioned why the unborn and the father were absent from the debate. 

"In all these discussions there is another human being that never gets mentioned – the one being formed within, let alone any fathers. Will the unborn even be given the chance to experience life, with all its joys and adventures?" he said.

He added: "We need a true retrieval of the common weal that universally values the interdependency of all humans at the beginning and end of life. I look forward to that day."