Converting a Catholic on Assisted Suicide

There aren’t many meetings that change your instinctive notions of what is right and wrong, but the day I spent with Tony and Jane Nicklinson was one. It may be because I am a lifelong Catholic, for better or worse, and my Church is so unbending in insisting that God gives and takes away life. Or that I have spent 20 years as chairman of a disability charity and have seen too often the casual mistreatment of those whom society once labelled “in-valid”. Or simply that I had never previously had the debate about the right-to-die spelt out so uncompromisingly for me by someone in the midst of the issue.

But if I went into the Nicklinsons’ specially adapted bungalow in the Wiltshire town of Melksham fundamentally opposed to any concessions on euthanasia, I emerged with my arguments demolished. And this by a man who had lost the power of speech.