A handful of brave celebrities have voiced how they really feel about assisted dying ahead of the debate and vote in parliament on 29 November.
Euthanasia is illegal in the UK and can be prosecuted as murder or manslaughter. The parliament debate marks the first attempt to change the law in a decade.
Assisted dying was back in the news again after Esther Rantzen — who is terminally ill with lung cancer — announced she had joined Dignitas, which is a Swiss non-profit organisation that provides physician-assisted dying.
“All I’m asking for is that we be given the dignity of choice,” Dame Esther told BBC News. “If I decide that my own life is not worth living, please may I ask for help to die?”
Liz Carr
Liz Carr is a celebrity who has given her voice to the other side of the assisted dying debate as seen in her documentary Better Off Dead? which tackles the subject head-on.
She previously told Yahoo: “There’s nobody even remotely famous that ever speaks out on this subject from this point of view. The other side’s got so many incredible people and then there’s like me and the pope.”
The Silent Witness actor shone a light on the “chilling” reality of an assisted dying clinic that she visited in Canada and met with Dr Ellen Wiebe for her documentary Better Off Dead?. MAID (Medical Assisted In Dying) became legal in Canada in 2016.
Speaking to Yahoo in May, she said: “It just felt really surreal. These places are really weird because I think sometimes there’s that idea of death can be scary and horrible and people are suffering and we don’t want that. So therefore, is this a very beautiful kind of velvet pillow death?
“And of course, life mostly isn’t like that. It depends on your view and what you want from your own death. It was chilling in the room.”
The actor is also an activist who has campaigned about assisted dying for many years and first approached the BBC to make her documentary in 2011 but it took six years to come to fruition.
Exclusive: Liz Carr reveals ‘chilling’ reality of assisted dying clinic in Better Off Dead
Prue Leith
The Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith is also an avid campaigner but she supports the idea of assisted dying and she is a patron of Dignity in Dying.
She gave her voice to the cause after she watched her elder brother David, who had bone cancer, “screaming in pain” before he died.
Earlier in November, she told Yahoo UK: “I saw my elder brother die a miserable, painful, protected death, in an NHS hospital, begging for help to die, screaming in pain, eventually drowning in phlegm, having decided to refuse antibiotics so the next bout of pneumonia would kill him.”
Leith added: “I’d never thought of it [assisted dying] before David got bone cancer, so no, I didn’t have an opinion. But I have always been in favour of people being in charge of their own lives, of thinking for themselves, of being allowed to do so.
“Of course if assisted dying had been legal, David would have taken it. He wanted to die, and frankly, anyone watching him would have wanted that for him. We would not allow a dog to suffer anything like that.”
Leith has been campaigning about assisted dying for more than a decade. She said: “I started campaigning over a decade ago, before I was so well known. And I don’t read social media so I avoid seeing the abuse I get, though I am aware of it.”
Exclusive: Prue Leith saw her elder brother ‘screaming in pain’ before his death
Dave Rowntree
Elsewhere, Blur drummer Dave Rowntree called the UK’s law on assisted dying “psychopathic” and he said it made him “bloody angry” in a recent interview.
His ex wife Paola Marra, whom he was married to in the 1990s, flew to Dignitas to take her own life after being diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer.
Speaking about it for the first time, he told The Guardian: “It is the system washing its hands of difficult problems in a way that I can’t stomach.
“That’s the whole point of the state. The state can declare war… And if the state isn’t going to take these kind of difficult decisions, what the f*** is the point in having the state? This is psychopathic, where we are now, because the whole point of this [should be] to try to make things easier for the real victim in this – the terminally ill person.”
Kirstie Allsopp
Property star Kirstie Allsopp is the latest celebrity to speak out about assisted dying ahead of the bill, saying it is “about the right to choose”.
She wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Surely, if we can chose whether or not to start our child’s life, we should be allowed to chose whether or not to end our own life? Using this bill to campaign about hospice care or NHS funding is completely wrong. 1/2
“However good palliative care is there are some people whose pain cannot be eased. My mother suffered from terrifying opiate induced hallucinations. She discovered this during her cancer surgery, and was terrified of a recurrence of them due to the need for pain control.”
The assisted dying bill is about the right to chose. Surely, if we can chose whether or not to start our child’s life, we should be allowed to chose whether or not to end our own life? Using this bill to campaign about hospice care or NHS funding is completely wrong. 1/2
— Kirstie Allsopp (@KirstieMAllsopp) November 27, 2024
In a thread, her tweets followed: “Dementia is not covered by this bill. Under this bill you would not be allowed to end your life due to a dementia diagnosis.
“I don’t want to be rude but that is an appalling comparison that could only be made by someone who has never seen the fear & pain of a prolonged cancer death.
“We will never be able to get it 100% right, human life & death is messy, but anyone who has seen people they love in fear & pain, knows that giving them options is vital.”
