Scottish Church leaders set out opposition to assisted suicide

Church leaders have expressed “very grave issues” about proposals to assisted suicide authorized in Scotland. 

Rev Andrew Downie, Moderator of the United Free Church of Scotland, and Rev Bob Akroyd, Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, are urging MSPs to not help Liam McArthur’s Bill to legalise assisted suicide. 

In a letter to all 129 MSPs, they are saying that supporting the proposed laws would cross “a vibrant crimson ethical line” and “imply that Scottish society has misplaced its belief within the inherent worth of all human life”.

They warned that Scotland dangers “changing into an moral wilderness” and stated that the Scottish Parliament “should at all times preserve that each one lives are equally significant”.

Legalising assisted suicide would ship the message that some individuals “have turn out to be unworthy of life”, they added.

“We imagine, as indicated within the guide of Genesis within the Bible, that everybody is created by God in his picture – a picture that displays and expresses his equal love for everybody. As a end result, each life has equal worth – a price which might solely be measured by the sufferings of Jesus Christ on the cross for humanity,” the church leaders write.

“We additionally imagine that for a civilised society to outlive, everybody ought to imagine that everybody else is equally beneficial. It is essential, subsequently, to grasp the results for the Scottish Parliament if it crosses the intense crimson ethical line of acknowledging that, if a life doesn’t attain a sure high quality, then it loses its price and may be ended.

“It would turn out to be a society the place the worth of all human life is definitely unequal and purely relative. It could be a society the place the price of each human life may then be graded relying on its usefulness, meaningfulness, and the quantity of delight it could expertise.”

The letter ends with a name for high quality palliative and hospice care to be developed throughout Scotland to make individuals “as comfy as potential with out deliberately ending their lives”.

“Society will then proceed to recognise these sufferers as having full price and worth whereas accepting them, unconditionally, for who they’re in compassion and care,” they stated.