Local
Women Affirming Life to sponsor forum on assisted suicide

By Pilot Staff
Posted: 3/2/2012

BRAINTREE -- The Pro Life Office of the Archdiocese of Boston, in partnership with Women Affirming Life, will sponsor a breakfast forum on March 10 at the Four Point Sheraton in Norwood.

The forum, titled "Physician Assisted Suicide: How to Inform Ourselves for a Meaningful Response," will feature the presenter M. C. Sullivan, a nurse, bioethicist, attorney and Director of Ethics at Covenant Health Systems in Tewksbury.

"We are delighted to have a speaker with M. C.'s unique combination of intellectual knowledge, extensive experience and personal faith commitment. She will guide us through a highly complex issue that involves difficult decisions for ourselves and loved ones and will help clarify the binding referendum on physician-assisted suicide which will appear on the November ballot in Massachusetts," stated Marianne Luthin, Director of the Pro Life Office.

A native of Boston, Sullivan earned a degree in philosophy from Emmanuel College and a diploma in nursing from the Newton-Wellesley Hospital School of Nursing. She has a Master's degree in Theological Studies in Ethics from Harvard University and received her law degree from the Massachusetts School of Law.

Prior to joining Covenant, M. C. worked as an independent consultant providing strategic counsel in communications, ethics, and public policy. While executive vice president of the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Mo. she helped develop and direct the center's initiative to promote integrity in biomedical research, a multi-year, multi-faceted project that promoted palliative care to improve the care of seriously ill and dying patients.

The forum will begin with a Mass celebrated by Monsignor Robert Deeley, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Boston.

Tickets cost $30, with no tickets sold at the door. To register, contact the Pro Life Office at 508-651-1900 or ProLifeOffice@rcab.org.