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THE Archbishop of Cardiff, the Most Reverend Peter Smith, attacks proposals to change the law on euthanasia as “morally wrong”.

I take that to mean that he regards a bill going through Parliament as immoral, because it would allow us to help a family member with terminal illness, agonising incurable pain, maybe a son or daughter in a vegetative state, to die if that was their wish.

I wonder how the Archbishop could justify such views to the parents of Daniel James or Terry Schiavo or Hannah Jones or Eluana Englaro.

You might remember Daniel James. This 23-year-old rugby player, at the peak of physical perfection, was paralysed in a training accident. For him, life was no longer worth living. After failed suicide attempts he told his parents he wished to escape from “the prison” of his body. They took him to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland where assisted suicide is legal, where they could say their final farewells.

Were they “immoral” to help their beloved son in that way?

After a car crash an American woman, Terry Schiavo, vegetated in a coma for 15 years with no hope of recovery. Her parents and husband finally insisted on the removal of the feeding tube that prevented her release. Predictably, the pro-life zealots of America tried to stop this, even though Terry herself had said before her accident that she would not want to be kept alive in a sort of limbo.

Was it “morally wrong” for the family who loved her to do this?

Do you remember the tragic story of Hannah Jones, the 13-year-old schoolgirl who refused an operation that might have prolonged her life? Instead she told her parents she would prefer to live as normally as possible and face an inevitable early death. Were they morally wrong to agree?

For 16 years in Italy, Beppino Englaro kept vigil at the bedside of his 37-year-old daughter Eleuna, another accident victim, as she lay in an irreversible coma. At last he was given permission to remove her feeding tube. Was he morally wrong to do so?

The Vatican thought so. Monsignor Rino Fisichella, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said that what had been authorised was euthanasia.

“A coma is a form of life and no one can take it upon themselves to put an end to the life of a person.”

Some life, and I’m still waiting to hear the Monsignor condemn the man who this month, in his words, took it upon himself to put an end to the life of the American abortion doctor George Tiller. Or of those who took it upon themselves to put an end to the lives of five other doctors and four abortion clinic workers.

Archbishop Smith targets those overseas clinics where sufferers are allowed to “die with dignity”. But you don’t have to cross the Channel for assisted suicide. According to Professor Emily Jackson of the London School of Economics, an expert on euthanasia, it happens right here in Britain, thousands of times a year.

The most common cause of death in Britain, she says, is “death by killing”. Killing by doctors. She claims that one third of all registered deaths are by deliberate morphine overdose, another third by the removal of life support, hastening death in most cases by just a few days or weeks.

(In passing, let’s remember that George V was killed by a morphine overdose, injected by his personal physician Lord Dawson on the night of January 20, 1936. This was done so that news of the monarch’s death would appear in next morning’s Times, instead of “the less appropriate evening papers”).

Meanwhile, polls have shown that 80% of the population support the right to die – and what scriptural authority says we do NOT have that right?

Yes, I’ve heard the arguments against – unscrupulous relatives will hustle poor old uncle into a clinic then claim whatever loot he leaves.

And I dismiss them as typical scare tactics. While concluding that I don’t want any Last Rites. Just my last Right.

Why do we put up with the Royals? - next page

Why do we put up with the Royals?

WIPEOUT In Wales. Tories Top the Polls.

Because, we’re told, Labour voters livid over the expenses scandal, stayed away.

But if politicians are forced out for fiddling why do we still tolerate the most blatant fiddlers of all?

The Royals.

Princess Beatrice, briefly working in the Foreign Office telling tourists how to stay un-mugged while abroad, stays un-mugged herself because we pay £100,000 for security for herself and sister Eugenie. Doting dad Andy treats helicopters like tramcars, at our expense. The Queen Mum spent our cash like Marie Antoinette while building up a £4m overdraft.

So if MPs have to go for spending our cash, why keep the Royals who spend a lot more of it?