The following unsolicited personal reflection on Assisted Suicide was received at the office of the Middlesbrough Catholic Voice.

Unable to include the item in the April 2010 issue of the Middlesbrough Catholic Voice for reasons of space, and unwilling to savagely edit the article to make it fit into the Voice, the article is published below in full.

Brian Dowd, Editor of the Middlesbrough Catholic Voice

Consultation on Assisted Suicide

Here is my personal petition giving many reasons why I totally oppose assisted suicide or any kind of euthanasia.

My father was a veteran of the First World War and considered himself blessed to live to a ripe old age of 90, sharing 60 years of marriage with my mother who herself lived to be 89 after giving birth to ten of us children! I remember they had many wonderful sayings, one of which was ‘live in hope or die in despair’.

I myself am now 63 years old and have not always enjoyed good health, having for 30 years been an insulin-dependant diabetic and very recently having been fitted with a pacemaker. Living alone as I do, the health traumas I have suffered have often been very frightening and I know that on certain occasions I have come very close to death. But I believe that life is precious and I love it and live in hope.

In the past I have also suffered from clinical depression for which I received hospital treatment and I know, therefore, what it is like ‘to want to die’ for people out there who now find themselves in this situation. I think it is terribly important that we help them and reach out with love and compassion. We must give them hope. We must learn to listen and actually hear their cry for help. Suicide is a subject close to my heart as my own poor niece, Sarah, threw herself off the Humber Bridge at the age of 32, leaving behind a tender young son. There are so many people ñ most particularly those disabled or living with crippling diseases ñ who find themselves on this kind of precipice. As a humane society we have a duty and obligation to each other. We are human beings.

Life is the centre of good and evil. We must fight for good not evil. Please protect our lives. Assisted suicide or any kind of euthanasia is morally unsound: the person who takes their life causes absolute misery and great unhappiness for those left behind, as they went when it was not their time to go!

A prosecution should always be the norm for anyone who assists another person to take their life: do not let vulnerable people live in fear of this Act. ‘Protect us now’.

As a society we must stand together for all that is truly good in the world and not allow any Act to be passed that would jeopardise our right to live.

We must stand for what is right, along with thousands of others who feel the same way. I urge you most sincerely to join or campaign for life and veto any proposals made to the contrary.

Assisted suicide along with euthanasia is evil and morally wrong.

Our human right is to life.

Help us to ‘live in hope’ and ‘not to die in despair’.

With sincere thanks for taking time to read this letter.

Yours faithfully

Kathleen Scaife (Mrs)