Dear James,
Many thanks for your reply. I'll post this letter on our blog so that your readers can explore the various links.
CNK's arguments against the legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide have always been based on evidence and fact as anyone reviewing our website can confirm. We do not use faith-based arguments.
Re our membership list the page on our website that you have linked to has not actually been revised since 2006. The number of CNK member organisations is now not 28 but around 50.
Most, as anyone would expect, are faith-based or pro-life. We have never denied this and would indeed be very surprised if such organisations did not associate with CNK given our aims although as I'm sure you are aware, there are individuals who profess faith who also back the legalisation of euthanasia and many faith-based organisations who do not back CNK.
To claim that people who belong to faith communities are the only ones with principled convictions about euthanasia is nonsense. My experience of your own supporters and spokespeople is that many do in fact have strong ideological and world-view convictions (what I would call faith convictions) about such things as human autonomy, human nature and the meaning of suffering that drive them to a pro-euthanasia position irrespective of any evidence. It would be interesting to explore some of these more existential issues with you in greater depth.
As you have correctly identifed there are also a number of CNK member organisations which have no faith or pro-life connection at all and some of our strongest supporters and spokespeople are people of no faith.
You will no doubt have noticed the coverage given today in the Telegraph to the powerful submissions criticising the DPP guidance by two non-faith based groups - Dying Well (not a member organisation of CNK) and Not Dead Yet (also not a member)
Indeed DID has failed in its objectives thus far because it has been unable to convince the disability rights movement, the medical profession, parliament or the judiciary (all non-faith based entities) of the rightness of its cause. DID's appeal has been instead to a small number of high profile 'hard cases' and its own strategically timed and crafted opinion polls targetting the uninformed and uncommitted worried well and based on simple yes/no questions with selective publication of the answers.
As I said to you in my last letter my personal objections to a change in the law are both principled and evidence-based. I have never denied that. But it is the latter arguments that have won the day in Parliament in both 2006 and 2009.
My challenge to you, would be to be encourage your spokespeople to be honest about the fact that the opposition to a change in the law is actually not solely faith based - one point on which your champion Lord Joffe was challenged on in the Times today.
Whilst talking transparency I would also like you to define the term 'terminally ill' for me. I have raised this issue with your spokespeople on several occasions and received different answers (or more usually no answer) on each occasion but the public has a right to know what you mean by it given that it is central to your campaign.
And finally in the interests of transparency I wonder if you would be willing to tell your supporters and the public what percentage of Tory MPs (who it appears may make up a majority of the new parliament) answered yes and no to the various questions asked in your recent MP poll. You chose not to disclose these facts because they did not support your cause but your readers can check them for themselves on the ipsos-mori website
With kind regards
Peter
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