20 December 2023 , 19:48
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Esther Rantzen says MPs should vote to change the law and legalise assisted dying.
Dame Esther, 83, said: “I would say to parliamentarians ‘think of the people you love in your own life, maybe who are older... and think how you would wish them to spend their last days and weeks’.
The veteran presenter, who has stage four lung cancer, added: “It is agonising to watch someone you love suffer. Nobody wants that for their family. And we live in a day and age when it’s perfectly possible to offer people a gentle, peaceful death. The memory of a bad death obliterates the happy memories that you would want to hang on to. Make this personal, think this through and then put it on the national agenda. Debate it carefully. And come, we hope, to a humane decision.”
The Mirror reported on Tuesday how Dame Esther said she planned to go to Swiss assisted-dying clinic Dignitas if a scan reveals “miracle” drug osimertinib is losing the fight against the rare EGFR-positive cancer she suffers from. Dame Esther, who founded support services ChildLine and The Silver Line, said yesterday: “I did not plan this as a campaign, my last campaign. It just happened because I was talking about my own dilemma. I haven’t been approached by anyone in politics.”
But she is confident of popular support, saying: “The public has now had enough of being ignored in this really crucial life-and-death issue. They really want change now. I’ve had so much response from people who feel they haven’t been heard, but who agree with me, and for whom it is an urgent consideration.” Her call is supported by daughter Rebecca Wilcox, 43.
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Rebecca told the Mirror this week of how her mother could die peacefully with medical assistance, adding: “She would want to be surrounded by her family.” She noted that, as things stand, no one could go with her mother on a final trip.
In 2015, MPs voted to keep assisted dying illegal in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It carries a 14-year maximum sentence and anyone who went with Dame Esther to Switzerland could be arrested on their return. Rebecca said: “I don’t want her to die. I certainly don’t want her to go alone. It’s an unknowable, unfathomable situation I never thought we’d be in.”
But she believes UK legislators could easily adapt the US state of Oregon’s 1997 Death With Dignity Act. She said: “We wouldn’t have to remake the wheel. We could stand on other people’s shoulders and make this work for our country.” Such a law could be written to protect the vulnerable from any “evil people” seeking to exploit it, she said.
When her mother visits for Christmas, Rebecca added, the pair could “doorstep” Rebecca’s local MP Michael Gove on the issue. Cabinet Minister Mr Gove backs a debate but has not yet decided personally. He said: “I am not yet persuaded of the case for assisted dying but I do think it’s appropriate for the Commons to revisit this.”