This is a reader's letter published in the Hereford Times on November 21.

IT worries me that Parliament is to give so little time to debating the ‘assisted dying’ bill.

I oppose the idea of assisted dying – more truthfully assisted suicide. First, on the basis that human life is sacred and no one has the right to take life, including their own. Many people of faith would uphold this principle.

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Secondly, over the ‘right to choose’. ‘Autonomy’ is a word often used by those who support assisted suicide, but this ignores the place of society in which we belong together.

Thirdly, the ‘thin end of the wedge’. Many have experienced the drawn-out death of a parent through dementia – a terminal illness without the convenience of a predictable timescale.

I worry that state-assisted suicide would later be widened to include elderly dementia sufferers.

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Fourthly, compassion. The experience of palliative care shows that real compassion is unlocked in helping people through their suffering towards the natural point of death. One person’s suffering can unlock another’s compassion.

Fifthly, this would put medical professionals in the position of having to make decisions about hastening death. Up to now in the UK medicine has been about caring and curing, not aiding suicide.

REV PAUL ROBERTS

Kington