The dying debate
At Women’s Health, we’re in the business of sharing stories and tactics that help you get the most out of life – now, and in the years to come. But what about what happens at the end? As assisted dying becomes more talked about than ever – and in an election year where campaigners believe the topic could be on the ballot – one writer dives into the debate
The diary entry is dated 22/12/2004. ‘I just want her to die,’ reads my angry scrawl. ‘It’s too much, it’s too hard.’ I meant it was too hard for her, my mum – whose brain tumour was slowly killing her. But I also meant for me. When she did die, nine months after a shock diagnosis, it was in a hospice, her face puffy with steroids, her breathing crackly – and I wasn’t there. As far as deaths go, I think it was peaceful. Maybe I’m just telling myself that – I can’t know for sure. But 18 years on, there’s a question that remains unanswered in my mind: if she’d been given the choice to die on her own terms, weeks or months before and surrounded by her family perhaps, would she have taken it?
Death – our own, of loved ones – stirs something in us all. Assisted dying is an even more complex, emotive issue – one many don’t dare think about until they’re impacted directly. But that’s changing. In March, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that a bill on assisted dying has been drafted and will go before the French parliament in May. Here, changes to current laws are being considered in Scotland and the Isle of Man. The issue became headline news when TV presenter Dame Esther Rantzen, who has stage four cancer, launched a petition in January to have the law changed that garnered 100,000-plus signatures, triggering a parliamentary debate on the topic. While the Commons’ Health and Social Care Committee didn’t call for a vote, Sir Keir Starmer (who, if polling is to be believed, will be Prime Minister before the year is out) told Rantzen he was ‘personally in favour of changing the law’ on assisted dying and was ‘committed’ to holding a vote, should he become PM.
Outside of political chambers, conversations are taking place among families and friends who feel the legal status of assisted dying – central as it is to the concept of autonomy over a person’s own health and life – is something too important to ignore. Online searches for ‘assisted dying’ increased 300% in December last year, after Rantzen told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she’d joined Swiss assisted dying clinic Dignitas.
Of course, it’s a live issue for those in their latter decades, like Rantzen; for people with life-limiting chronic illness or disabilities; and for those whose parents are suffering, like my mum was. But it’s also resonant for those c
