Polly Toynbee’s article (Could MPs finally be ready to support the case for assisted dying?, 26 March) is timely and accurate in focusing attention on the changes made or being processed in a range of countries. I sincerely hope that the answer to the question is yes, and MPs will support a change in the law.
My late wife and I (both retired registered nurses) campaigned for choice at the end of life, such as is now legalised in an increasing number of jurisdictions. The issue became very personal for us when, in the final months of a long and difficult illness, the serious pain my wife was suffering escaped the capacity of the drugs prescribed by the excellent hospice community team to control.
She died nine years ago, but each winter I am again haunted by the memory of her screams of pain and calls for her life to be over. A death devoid of dignity and peace. I retain a sense of guilt that it was so.
Neither of us wished to impose an assisted death on those who chose otherwise. But in return I wish to have the right to exercise my different choice.
Reg Pyne
Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire
• Polly Toynbee has thrown down the gauntlet to MPs on assisted dying. In 2015, a friend of mine stood outside parliament with a Dignity in Dying poster that said “MPs need the guts to change the law”. His wife had died the year before at Dignitas, driven there by the end stages of supranuclear palsy and beyond palliative care. A year later, my friend died at Dignitas, also driven there by unimaginable suffering from cancer. Both died far from home, with accompanying friends not prosecuted but still deemed criminals in the eyes of our outdated law.
Our parliament has so far turned a blind eye to the right of terminally ill people to choose a humane death, while hypocritically leaving the ethics of it to a foreign government. But the world is leaving us behind. Already around 250 million people worldwide now have access to legal and safeguarded assisted dying. Soon Ireland may join them, and maybe even Scotland. Many people in England and Wales support a change in the law. If MPs need convincing, the government could issue a call for evidence, and then MPs could have the guts to change the law. That change would be a fitting tribute to those who have suffered unnecessarily at the end of life.
Mick Murray
Matlock, Derbyshire
• I certainly hope MPs are finally ready to support the case for assisted dying because, as Polly Toynbee points out, the majority of the public are in favour of terminally ill adults being given this option. Doctors intervene in all life’s stages – carrying out heart transplants and IVF – so why can’t they use their skills to bring about a peaceful death at life’s end, if this is the patient’s wish? It is interesting that an increasing number of countries now allow assisted dying.
I believe that many people would enjoy their lives more if they didn’t have the concern that they may one day suffer a long-drawn-out painful and undignified death. Most of us wouldn’t want our loved ones to see us suffering greatly, as we want them to be left with happier memories of us.
Ann Wills
Ruislip, London
