Right to Die

We all have a right to die with dignity

Fiona Phillips 4/10/2008

At times I really wanted to kill my mum.

She actually died two years ago, but only after suffering the tortures of one of the worst chronic diseases, Alzheimer's.

Which is why I often wanted to kill her. She couldn't walk, talk, swallow. She had no dignity, no life, no point. So what is the point of that? Always glamorous and smiley, my mum would light up a room when she walked in.

If she'd known how she would end up, she'd have wanted a dignified way out.

Often when I was in her room in a nursing home - somewhere she always said she'd "hate to end up" - I could have put a pillow over her face to end her misery.

I could have, but I didn't relish the idea of a murder trial. That's why Debbie Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, is battling in a test case in the High Court.  more 

Let this woman die as she chooses, not in a death plant

Debbie Purdy says the present legislation on assisted suicide is cowardly. She's wrong - it's barbaric

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• 
• • Catherine Bennett
  • The Observer, 
  • Sunday October 5 2008
  • Article history

The last time assisted suicide was debated at Westminster, the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Rev Kenneth Stevenson, explained that death is too important to leave to dying people. 'Dying,' said the bishop, disclosing that he had been diagnosed with leukaemia, 'is not an entirely individual matter. It is corporate.' In the case of Debbie Purdy, it could hardly be more so.

The whole country now knows that Ms Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, has thought in detail about when and how she wishes to die. When the pain of her illness becomes intolerable, she would like to have the choice, as the able-bodied do, of taking her own life. For her, physical incapacity may mean that she needs help to do this. Although suicide is legal in Britain, assisting suicide remains a crime which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

The most recent attempt to reform this law as it relates to terminally ill people, in a bill brought by Lord Joffe, was wrecked in the upper house two years ago after a debate in which successive men and women of faith proclaimed the sanctity of life. Lord Ahmed, for instance, could not countenance dying people, of any description, defying a section of the Koran in which it says: 'Do not kill yourselves. For verily God Almighty has been most merciful to you.'

So unless the law is changed before she is in unbearable pain, Ms Purdy will need to arrange her death in conformity with the wishes of God Almighty, as relayed to the House of Lords. 'My dearest wish,' she said last week, 'would be to die with dignity in my own home, with my husband and loved ones around me.' Instead, she will have to travel to Switzerland, to the peripatetic Dignitas facilities, recently located next to a brothel on an industrial estate near Zurich. Here, in exchange for £1,255 (not including services of a doctor, registry, cremation, accompanying visitors etc), she will be handed a lethal dose of barbiturates.

But what if Purdy's husband, Omar Puente, helps organises this suicide in Switzerland? Would not that make him her suicide assistant? On this, British law is stubbornly unclear and Ms Purdy would like it, for her husband's sake, to be clarified. 'For 13 years, I've been in love with this man, he's everything to me,' she said, 'and I'm not about to see him take a risk of prosecution.'  more