Church backs Winterton Bill

THE BISHOPS of England and Wales have welcomed a Private Member's Bill, which, if made law, will criminalise the deliberate withholding of food and water from health service patients in order to kill them, write Citra Sidhu and Simon Caldwell.
The bishops said the Bill, which has its Second Reading in Parliament today, was "particularly timely in view of the apparent ambiguities in the Government's stance on the issue of euthanasia".
The bishops said the Government was equivocating over euthanasia, opposing it by means of "deliberate intervention" while saying nothing in respect of "euthanasia by default".
The bishops' comments came as anti-euthanasia campaigners handed in a 10,000-name petition to Downing Street, calling on Tony Blair to support Congleton MP Ann Winterton's Medical Treatment (Prevention of Euthanasia) Bill.
The petition urged the Prime Minister to issue a public statement "condemning and firmly rejecting" the guidelines issued by the British Medical Association last July which offer legal protection to doctors who starve and dehydrate their patients to death.
The petition was delivered by a delegation which included members of Alert, the Guild of Catholic Doctors, the Medical Ethics Alliance and the Islamic Medical Association. \