I recently rejoined this charirty which campaigns for a change in UK law to allow assisted dying. I was prompted by wanting to support Debbie Purdy who has progressive MS. She is challenging the Director of Public Prosecutions to issue a statement about his policy towards people who accompany a loved one overseas to die. At present the only countries in the world to allow assited dying/assisted suicide are Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and the US state of Oregan. In Europe Holland and Belgium do not allow foreign nationals to use this law and so terminally ill UK citizens who wish to die at a time of their choosing have to travel to Switzerland and then anyone who accompanies them faces the risk of questioing and possible prosecution when they return to the UK. Purdy seeks a clarification in the law.
I have also recently read a really good book by Mary Warnock and Elizabeth MacDonald called Easeful Death and its provides a compelling argument for a change in the law here.
I have supported a change in the law for many years. Now my cancer is terminal I feel even more strongly. I dread, not dying, but dying after a long drawn out final illness and want the right to be helped to end my life at a time of my choosing. I find this subject strangely missing from discussion about living with advanced breast cancer…feel hesitant about raising it…as though somehow ‘letting the side down.’
I know some people have strong religious and moral objections on this issue…indeed it is the intervention of the Church of England in the Lords which stopped recent attempts to change the law. There is now sufficient evidence from the expeience of Oregan(10 years) that liberal legislation on assisted dying does not lead to a ‘sliippery slope’ and one of the benefits of a change in the law is actually improvements in palliative care.
I wonder if there are other people with breast cancer who feel equally strongly. I’d like to do some serious campaigning with Dignity in Dying, and at a personal level, nothing would lessen my distress more about the thought of what is to come than the knowledge that I could choose to die in dignity at time of my choosing…which could be earlier than a ‘natural’ death. I know that the exisiting law may enable pain controlwhich will make my last days ‘comfortable’ and ‘peaceful’ but what about those of us who don’t want the last weeks or the last few months thanks? I know the disability movement in general is heavily split on this issue and I suspect the cancer community is too.
I recently heard the beautiful story of friend of a friend in Holland with advanced cancer who had a big party the night before she used the law to die. What a way to go.
And finally in the words of John Keats:
Ode to a Nightingale
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain.
Jane