The UK will cross a ‘legal and ethical Rubicon’ if the law on assisted suicide in England and Wales is changed, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said. MPs will debate the Assisted Dying Private Members' Bill on Friday 11 September; it proposes to allow doctors to help terminally ill patients to die in some circumstances. Justin Welby said the bill would mean that suicide was ‘actively supported’ instead of being viewed as a tragedy. He and the heads of other Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh groups believe the bill goes beyond merely legitimising suicide to actively supporting it and they have issued a joint letter urging MPs to reject it. The Archbishop said that asking doctors to aid suicide would be a change of monumental proportions both in the law and in the role of doctors. ‘This respect for the lives of others goes to the heart of both our criminal and human rights laws and ought not to be abandoned,’ the archbishop said.