Greg DalyIrish anti-euthanasia campaigners will be joining with disability rights organisations in a protest outside Britain’s Houses of Parliament to coincide with a parliamentary debate on assisted suicide.
Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick, director of Hope Ireland, told The Irish Catholic he would be joining ‘Not Dead Yet UK’, tomorrow [Friday] “together with many other organisations promoting the rights of disabled people” to protest against the Assisted Suicide Bill sponsored by Mr Rob Marris.
Mr Marris is the Labour MP for Wolverhampton and the protest will coincide with the first debate of the bill in the House of Commons.
“We need Members of Parliament to hear our collective voice now,” Fr Fitzpatrick said.
The Marris bill is the latest in a succession of attempts to introduce assisted suicide in Britain. In May the Scottish parliament voted 82-36 against the introduction of physician-assisted suicide, and Lord Falconer’s assisted suicide bill ran out of time during the last parliament after facing strong opposition at committee stage.
“If the assisted suicide bill became law,” Dr Fitzpatrick, who has been disabled for more than 40 years, told The Irish Catholic, “terminally ill and disabled people would not gain rights. I am protesting peacefully on September 11 because terminally ill and disabled people need enhanced societal safeguards, and this bill only serves to heighten our sense of vulnerability.”
He added that it was “ironic” that MPs would be preparing to vote “to legalise and promote the widespread, untimely death of the vulnerable and disabled” just one day after World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10.
“If we assemble in large numbers to protest against this bill, then our presence alone will serve to remind Members of Parliament that what disabled people need is the resources to live independent lives, and what the terminally ill need is the best palliative care service that can be delivered,” he said.
Armagh’s Archbishop Eamon Martin has already joined Westminster’s Cardinal Vincent Nichols in urging MPs to reject the Marris bill.