Sir, I am 17, have severe spina bifida and use a wheelchair. I lead a very fulfilled life, and I am very angry that there is a debate about whether I was in fact entitled to this life of mine (“Church says it is morally acceptable to allow sick babies to die”, Nov 13).

Who gave people the right to say that my life is less worthwhile than theirs? There are other disabilities less visible but worse to have, such as arrogance, selfishness and lack of compassion.

Why don’t we campaign to get rid of people with those disabilities because those are more destructive of society than mere physical disabilities for which I cannot be blamed.

LUKE THOMAS
Bodmin

Sir, The Dean of Southwark Cathedral, the Ven Colin Slee, summarises and endorses a report calling for allowing very sick children to die, with the couplet “Thou shalt not kill, but need’st not strive/ officiously to keep alive”.

Mr Slee seems not to have noticed that this is not “King James Version language” (as he puts it), but a quotation from the Victorian poet Arthur Hugh Clough. In his poem The Latest Decalogue, Clough parodied attempts to update each of the Ten Commandments in turn, with such couplets as “Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat/ When it’s so lucrative to cheat”, or the one quoted above, and they are obviously deeply ironic.

It is doubly ironic, therefore, that Mr Slee seems unaware that the lines he quotes were written to subvert and pillory the very liberalising tendency he represents.

THE REV CHRIS GREEN
London N14

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