29 February 2024 , 13:56
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Dame Esther Rantzen says watching the seasons change and spending time with her grandchildren is "precious" as this could be her last spring.
The journalist and TV presenter, 83, has stage four lung cancer, and has renewed her calls for a debate and vote on legalising assisted dying, saying she would feel “confidence” knowing her own death could be “dignified”.
“It’s a constant background to everything I do,” she says. “I’m watching the spring flowers come out, thinking: ‘This is probably my last spring.’ When I talk to my grandchildren when they come and visit me, I’m very aware these moments are precious. They may be the last memories they have of me.
“My own death is constantly in my mind. It would give me so much confidence if I could also know that however the illness progresses, whatever pain it causes, wherever it strikes me next, I will still have the choices of a pain free, dignified private death surrounded by the people I love. I’m not demanding that everybody in the world agrees with me, I’m just saying let’s debate all the issues now that we’ve got international evidence and we know the public attitude is in favour,” Dame Esther told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Esther Rantzen with daughter Rebecca Wilcox (Getty Images Europe)The Health and Social Care Committee reported evidence that some countries which allowed assisted dying could have better end-of-life care. MPs said the UK government must make plans for if the law is changed in Scotland, the Isle of Man or Jersey, where new measures are being considered, but the report did not make a recommendation for a vote on the issue.
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Dame Esther said she was “disappointed” that the committee did not call for a vote, noting that a delay “doesn’t fit into her timescale”. “This report does not help very much for those of us who desperately want the current law to change for the sake of our own families, and the many others in our situation,” she also said.
Esther has joined Dignitas assisted dying clinic in Switzerland, but has noted that her family could face criminal charges if they were to accompany her to end her life there. In England and Wales, the 1961 Suicide Act makes it an offence to encourage or assist someone to take their own life.