THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, insists today that human and ethical reasons mean that the Church of England can never soften its line on euthanasia.

Writing in The Times, Dr Williams says that assisted dying involves other people in an act of suicide and suggests that the recognition of a legal right to assisted dying could entail a responsibility on others to kill.

While conceding that the right to be spared avoidable pain is beyond debate, he says that once that has become a right to expect assistance in dying, the responsibility of others is involved. “Legislation ignores these issues to its cost,” he says.

The issue of assisted euthanasia was reignited last week when Brian Blackburn, a retired policeman who killed his terminally ill wife in a suicide pact, received a nine-month suspended sentence at the Old Bailey. The court was told that Blackburn’s wife, Margaret, 62, had just weeks to live and had asked her husband to cut her wrists.

The Archbishop’s intervention comes after one of his own advisers, Professor Robin Gill, of Canterbury University, said that people should not be prosecuted for helping dying relatives in pain to end their lives.

The Church of England insisted that the choice of Dr Gill as emissary did not signify any softening of its traditional stance, and Dr Williams’ article takes that farther, restating the Church’s position and presenting fresh reasoning in support.

The Archbishop received the backing of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O’Connor. A spokesman said: “The Archbishop of Canterbury has made a powerful argument of faith and reason against euthanasia which the Cardinal strongly agrees with.”

But Mark Slattery, of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, said that Dr Williams was out of step with many Christians. “The majority of worshippers think it is a matter of compassion that when someone faces death, the issue of how they die is a very important one.

“When you are facing death you do not have a choice between life or death. The choice is sometimes only whether you die well or badly.”

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