Earlier this week, a historic Westminster debate appeared to indicate that an assisted dying law for the UK is now a question of when, not if.
Dame Esther's energetic campaigning to change UK law and make assisted dying legal in this country has moved the controversial question forward in a way that was unimaginable only a few months ago. In a country that's traditionally squeamish about the topic, she's made it very much part of the conversation.
Some had watched their own loved ones die in agony. Others had heard such stories from their constituents. Some knew of constituents who had chosen to take their own lives by horrific and violent methods because they could no longer bear the suffering caused by their illness. I began campaigning for a change in the law nearly 20 years ago, after watching my own parents' deaths. For a year I had sat alongside my bedridden mother as she suffered the pain and distress of late stage Parkinson's Disease. She was unable to move of her own volition. She couldn't eat because she could no longer swallow. She became painfully thin, but never lost the sharpness of her brain or the clarity of her speech.
He died in 2006. No one wanted to talk to me about the possibility of changing the law to enable assisted death then. When I argued that it should be the choice of the person who was suffering and dying, I would be accused of being a pagan and was told only God could control how and when a patient died. I fear the ardently religious have succeeded in blocking any change for far too long.
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