Esther Rantzen calls for people to back ‘urgent’ assisted dying petition (Image: Getty)
The TV star has called on those who want what is best for their families to help by signing our petition demanding MPs urgently debate and then vote with their conscience to change the law.
Lifelong campaigner Dame Esther, 83, has terminal lung cancer and wants the right to end her life as and when she chooses.
Giving a searingly honest assessment of her future one year after her stage 4 diagnosis, Dame Esther said: “If you believe, as I do, it is time that Parliament debated this most sensitive issue please sign this petition. It is our life, it surely should be our choice, and for patients like me, it is urgent.”
The Daily Express Give Us Our Last Rights crusade calls for assisted dying to be legalised for terminally ill people who are mentally sound and expected to die within six months.
Under the current ban, family members who answer pleas for help to die can be jailed for conspiracy to murder, an “outdated and restrictive” practice that has prolonged the agony of slow and painful deaths for millions of families.
Grandmother-of-five Dame Esther, who lost her beloved husband Desmond Wilcox to heart disease in 2000, added: “Many of us need the hope and reassurance of a reform in the law of assisted dying so that we can decide ourselves if life becomes too painful to endure.
“A friend who lives in Canada where it has been legalised told me of three friends who chose assisted dying, and she said that made it a sacrament rather than an agonising ordeal.
“Yes, there must be precautions in a new bill. Yes, I understand that some people have religious objections or other reasons to oppose assisted dying, but should that minority prevent the majority from having the choice?”
Our petition asks the Government to fully debate assisted dying before giving MPs the opportunity to vote on the issue free of party lines as a matter of conscience. They last voted 330 to 118 against changing the law in 2015.
In the years since, record numbers of Brits have signed up to Dignitas. The Zurich-based clinic provides medical assistance to die for members with terminal illness or severe physical or mental illness.
The first Brit died there in 2002 and there are now 1,528 UK members.
- Support fearless journalism
- Read The Daily Express online, advert free
- Get super-fast page loading
The absence of an assisted dying law in the UK has forced those with terminal illnesses to take drastic measures to seize control of their death. Nearly 350 Britons have ended their lives at Dignitas at a cost of more than £10,000.
Assisted dying is legal in Switzerland for foreign nationals providing they meet strict eligibility criteria. However, family members who accompany loved ones risk prosecution and a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
In a direct message to lawmakers, Dame Esther said: “It’s important that the law catches up with what the country wants. All we ask is the choice. It’s our life, and it will be our death.”
“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. 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.”
Assisting a suicide is illegal in Britain and can be prosecuted as murder or manslaughter. Since 2009, there have been 167 cases referred to the Crown Prosecution Service, three of which have been successfully prosecuted.
Dame Esther’s daughter Rebecca Wilcox, 43, said: “I know that when my father died, all we thought about for years were those last seconds. Those last moments when there were tubes, there was blood, there was beeping, there were nurses, they were doctors, there was a lot of crying and that’s all I could remember of my father for so long.”
READ MORE We are far too ready to shy away from the taboo subject of death
“Mum has had such a life, such a legacy. Even as a mother, let alone as the campaigning broadcaster that she’s known as, so just to remember her in pain and unhappy would be awful. A waste. Such a waste.”
“The fact is only three people a year get prosecuted. But [the thought] of going through a court case at what [would be] the worst time of my life [is unthinkable].
“Mum is my person. I do not want to live without her. I will have to live without her and please, please don’t make it worse for me by accusing me of murdering her and making me go through what would be a terrifying legal process.”
Since revealing she had signed up to Dignitas Dame Esther has been inundated with touching and deeply personal testimonies from those in similar situations.
She said: “I am so grateful to the readers of the Express for their wonderful support. You have given me strength when I need it most.”
“I know the memory of a bad death obliterates the happy memories that you would want to hang on to, but the memory of a good death is comforting for all those involved.”
“So I would say to MPs make this personal because there is no more personal decision than your own life or your own death.”
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, welcomed the petition and urged people to sign it “to show MPs the need for change”.
Sir Keir Starmer has insisted he would support a change in the law on assisted dying by making it a free vote for MPs if he becomes Prime Minister.
The Labour leader said he was an “advocate” for reform and warned the current law was not working.
Dame Esther Rantzen’s, who has stage 4 lung cancer, is campaigning with this newspaper for rights that would allow the terminally ill and seriously sick to choose how and when to die under our Give Us Our Last Rights crusade.
Sir Keir, who backed a failed bid by MPs to change legislation in 2015, said: “I am an advocate of a change to the law. Obviously that change has to be very carefully crafted.”
She warned that Westminster risked being left behind as other parts of the UK – Scotland, Jersey and the Isle of Man – move ahead with bills that could see assisted dying legalised in some places as soon as 2025.
Ms Wootton added: “We simply must do better for dying people in Britain, who should have the choice of an assisted death, alongside excellent palliative care.”
“Signing this petition is one simple way to show MPs the need for change. Assisted dying must at last be given Parliamentary time for a full and fair debate – a vital step on the road to law change.”
