WE’VE reached another crucial moral crossroads. An opinion poll suggests that four out of five of us approve of assisted suicide.

Then, author Terry Pratchett – himself suffering from Alzheimer’s – uses his Richard Dimbleby lecture to call for tribunals as the common-sense solution to what he calls ‘assisted death’.

All this follows on from high-profile heart-rending cases of suffering – hard cases we and especially the sufferers find hard to live with.

Our hearts cry out for an end, though it’s not always clear whether it’s for our sake or the sufferer’s. Each of us at the death-bed of a loved one rarely knows why we want an end to come swiftly.

Here’s the first danger. I’ve given up forecasting the future of those I visit, for I’ve often prayed for merciful release and God has ignored me to provide recovery and even more good, healthy years.

And can we decide to assist suicide in the week we’ve discovered that the ‘living dead’, those in persistent vegetative states for years, can still actually communicate and make their own decisions?

Hard cases open doors to deathly laws, which then become flood gates to things we never dreamt of.

Remember wanting to help a few desperate cases and halt back-street butchering with an Abortion Act?

Now 50 unborn babies are killed every working hour.

Surely – as our Roman Catholic Bishops wisely urged this week – God calls us to help our loved ones have a good death, as pain free as allowable, nursed, supported and loved as much as possible.