UK pro-life leaders warn of 'disaster' in outsourcing assisted dying to private sector
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null / Credit: Drop of Light/ShutterstockLondon, England, Mar 11, 2025 / 14:45 pm (CNA).Leading pro-life campaigners in England and Wales have expressed alarm following reports that Westminster's proposed "assisted dying" process might be outsourced to private companies.Following a report in The Times that the U.K. government is considering contracting out assisted death to the private sector, should it become legal, a spokesperson for Right to Life UK said the plans were "a disaster waiting to happen."Members of Parliament (MPs) voted in favor of an assisted dying bill in November 2024 at its second reading, and the bill is now under the scrutiny of a parliamentary committee, which is examining how "assisted dying" might work in England and Wales.The report in The Times stated that resorting to an arrangement with the private sector would be a means of easing pressure on the taxpayer-funded National Health Service (NHS), which has notoriously long waiting lists.However, Cather...
null / Credit: Drop of Light/Shutterstock
London, England, Mar 11, 2025 / 14:45 pm (CNA).
Leading pro-life campaigners in England and Wales have expressed alarm following reports that Westminster's proposed "assisted dying" process might be outsourced to private companies.
Following a report in The Times that the U.K. government is considering contracting out assisted death to the private sector, should it become legal, a spokesperson for Right to Life UK said the plans were "a disaster waiting to happen."
Members of Parliament (MPs) voted in favor of an assisted dying bill in November 2024 at its second reading, and the bill is now under the scrutiny of a parliamentary committee, which is examining how "assisted dying" might work in England and Wales.
The report in The Times stated that resorting to an arrangement with the private sector would be a means of easing pressure on the taxpayer-funded National Health Service (NHS), which has notoriously long waiting lists.
However, Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for Right to Life UK, said the move would be a mistake. "Introducing assisted suicide to the U.K. would be a disaster waiting to happen, made potentially even worse if outsourced to the private sector," she said.
"It could easily create a perverse incentive to push assisted suicide on patients where, in a specialized Dignitas-like service, an assisted suicide business seeks to assist in ending the lives of their clients as quickly and efficiently as possible in order to maximize profits," she added.
Robinson continued: "Under such a system, the existing checks and safeguards will likely be increasingly viewed as an inconvenience and a barrier to business. The welfare of vulnerable patients will be especially at risk due to the profit motive."
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops' Conference for England and Wales said: "We have consistently opposed the bill to legalize assisted suicide in principle. We encourage all Catholics in England and Wales to make their voices heard and contact their MPs to ask them to vote against it at third reading."
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is expected to reach its next stage, known as the report stage, later in the spring and then MPs will be given a chance to vote again on the bill at third reading, having assessed the committee's recommendations on the bill.
If it passes, the bill will then have to progress through the House of Lords before it can receive royal assent and become law.
The government health secretary, Wes Streeting, has made no secret of his concern that legalizing "assisted dying" would place too much pressure on the NHS.
"There would be resource implications for doing it. And those choices would come at the expense of other choices," he told Times Radio in November 2024.
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The J. Edgar Hoover FBI headquarters building in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsWashington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 17, 2025 / 19:34 pm (CNA).FBI Director Kash Patel said in a U.S. Senate hearing that there have been "terminations" and "resignations" of employees related to a 2023 anti-Catholic memo produced by Richmond, Virginia's field office and the agency has made policy adjustments.Patel made the comments during a Sept. 16 line of questioning from Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who requested an update on the administration's investigation into the memo and asked about the FBI's efforts to combat anti-Catholic and anti-Christian violence and hate crimes.He did not specify how many people were terminated or what their roles were in drafting the memo."We are doing our investigation simultaneously with Congress," Patel said. "Just to put it in perspective, we provided 700 documents on the Richmond Catholic memo, specifically to this committee...
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View of the San Diego skyline. / Credit: russellstreet, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsCNA Staff, Sep 17, 2025 / 13:19 pm (CNA).A deacon in San Diego told parishioners last week that he will voluntarily deport himself after his residency status was revoked by the U.S. government.The deacon reportedly made the announcement at St. Jude Shrine of the West during Masses on Sept. 14. Local media reported that the clergyman came to the U.S. when he was 13 and "served the St. Jude community for roughly four decades." He will reportedly be returning to Tijuana, Mexico.Local reports did not identify the deacon. A diocesan representative indicated to CNA that the news reports were accurate, but the diocese said it could not identify the deacon himself and that he was handling the matter privately.Representatives at St. Jude Parish did not respond to queries regarding the announcement.The deacon's self-deportation comes amid a wave of heightened immigration enforcement around the coun...
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Nigeria is "sinking in many fronts," the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Nigeria, Archbishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, has said. / Credit: Catholic Secretariat of NigeriaACI Africa, Sep 17, 2025 / 14:10 pm (CNA).Nigeria is "sinking in many fronts," the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) said at a recent meeting, lamenting that in addition to economic hardships Nigerians are grappling with, many communities have been thrown into perpetual mourning due to unending insecurity.In his address at the ongoing interactive session between CBCN and the "prominent lay faithful" of Calabar ecclesiastical province, Archbishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji said many Nigerians have been killed, and those who fled are languishing in camps where they are exposed to extreme weather conditions, often without food and water.Acknowledging "notable progress here and there" in the country where persecution against Christians is said to be the highest globally, the a...
