The Closure of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre

It is with immense sadness we announce that staff have recently been informed of ‘the closure of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, Oxford’. This decision has been made on financial grounds by the Centre’s Corporate Trustee, the Catholic Trust for England and Wales.

After 31 July 2025, staff of the Centre will no longer be available to respond to queries on matters of bioethics. The Centre is no longer seeking donations.

It is the earnest hope of staff at the Centre that some means may be found to continue to make available the resources that the Centre has generated, and also to continue the vital work of bioethical research and education that fully respects the dignity of the human person.

I would invite those who wish to be kept up to date on bioethical issues to send an e-mail to david.jones@stmarys.ac.uk I would use this correspondence only to contact you on matters related to bioethics and you would have the opportunity at any time to ask that your details be deleted.

Staff are grateful to all those who have sustained the Centre in the past by their prayers and the generous financial support from trusts, organisations, communities and especially from individual donors. We are also well aware that the core funding that came through the Day for Life fund came from the generosity of many thousands of parishioners. And finally, we would like to acknowledge the support the Centre has received from the Catholic community in Ireland, especially during the pandemic when second collections were not possible.

We would like to emphasise that, though the Centre is now being closed, these donations have not been wasted but have helped educate and support generations of conscientious healthcare professionals, clerics, and lay people over almost 50 years. This support has also helped prevent repeated attempts to legalise euthanasia or assisted suicide in Britain and Ireland from 1993 to the present.

Even where it has not been possible to prevent an unethical law from being passed (for example the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 or its amendment in 2008), the Centre has maintained a witness the dignity of human life from conception to natural death. We have been able to give advice to professionals, carers, and patients about how to act ethically despite the establishment of unethical practices within healthcare.

We give thanks to God, and to our Patron St Raphael, for all that has been done through our work. As a reminder of these good fruits we attached the last Friends’ Newsletter (from 2022) which looks back at the history of the Centre.

Much of the focus of the work of the Centre over the past year has been the attempt in Scotland and in England and Wales to decriminalise ‘encouraging and assisting suicide’ in the case of people deemed to have a ‘terminal’ illness. Our work has been cited in Parliament and we have helped inform many people who are concerned about this issue.

Despite the efforts of many people of good will, assisted suicide Bills continue to make progress both in Scotland and in England and Wales, albeit by narrow majorities. While the Centre will no longer be in a position to provide new resources, we urge people to make use of the resources we have already made available and to engage with the Scottish Parliament and with the House of Lords as these bodies continue to debate dangerous and ill-thought-out legislation.

In sorrow but with gratitude and in steadfast hope,

Professor David Albert Jones