THIS week people from St Mary’s Roman Catholic parish in Hexham and from the wider Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle are in Lourdes with tens of thousands of others who are disabled, terminally ill, or incapacitated in many ways.

They are there to care for and pray with them, because they value each of those individuals as highly as themselves.

At the same time, I tried to contact our MP, Guy Opperman, who is backing the bill that will allow our society to kill those that it agrees are not worth the continued gift of life.

He, it seems from his assistant’s reply, has a closed mind on the matter and does not want to listen to other perspectives.

If people believe that their lives are not worth living, it is for society to show them otherwise, not to aid them in killing themselves.

Once we allow ourselves to decide who is or isn’t worth having alive, then none of us is safe.

J.P. RONAN

Hexham