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Dame Esther Rantzen has admitted that if the vote on assisted dying laws changing is lost next month, it will be too late to help her.
The broadcaster and ChildLine founder has terminal cancer and has been campaigning for a change in the law to make assisted dying legal, but told Good Morning Britain that she was running out of time if ministers voted against the changes in November.
Rantzen also spoke about why she had “got cross” at Wes Streeting and why she didn’t think it was the best way to win people over to her point of view.
What, how, and why?
Dame Esther Rantzen made a frank statement on how important the assisted dying vote is for her when she spoke to Good Morning Britain on Friday, saying: “If this vote is lost on 29 November, I don’t think the law will change in time for me.”
The broadcaster and ChildLine founder was speaking to ITV1’s breakfast news show about Wes Streeting’s leaked comments that he did not agree with changing assisted dying laws, and although she said she did not want to give an update on her own health, she shared how she was feeling generally.
Rantzen said: “I’m surviving. I’m talking a lot about death and assisted dying which is a tiny bit depressing, but it wakes me up in the morning which is very good for me.
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“I’ll go and have a crumpet and a bit of butter and keep my fingers crossed about this vote, because if this vote is lost on 29 November, I don’t think the law will change in time for me. But I do think thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will have to wait another decade before they get the right to choose. Not to shorten their lives, but to shorten their deaths.”
She has previously said that she plans on visiting Dignitas to avoid her family having to see her deteriorate in her final days, and has been tirelessly campaigning for a change in the UK law so that she can stay at home with her loved ones rather than make the journey to the Swiss clinic alone.
Talking about objections to assisted dying, she said: “If you take the right to terminate a pregnancy, people would have said that would have hard cases, that has problems and potential dangers. But actually, the right of a woman to choose over her own body won out in the end and I think I have the right to choose over my own body if I find my life is unbearable and I want to end it.
“If there are two doctors and a judge making sure it really is my view then I think I will be protected from coercion. My heart goes out to anyone who tries to coerce me. But not everyone is quite so belligerent.”
What did Wes Streeting say that made Dame Esther Rantzen ‘get cross’?
Rantzen phoned in to Good Morning Britain to talk about her anger at Streeting’s leaked comments on assisted dying, saying: “At the age of 84 I should know better, because it’s a very, very bad idea to get cross. For two reasons – one is, it’s rude, and the other is, it puts people off, they don’t listen to you.
“The letter I wrote to Mr Streeting, which sounded cross, I’m rewriting to sound less cross but I hope just as passionate. I was so sad that the secretary of state for health, a very, very influential man, wasn’t following the government’s advice to stay neutral if you’re a minister so that everybody could make up their own mind according to their own conscience.”
Health secretary Streeting had hit headlines for a conversation with backbench MPs in a meeting that he had believed to be private, but which was leaked as he had spoken about his intention to vote against a change to assisted dying laws.
Streeting was reported to have said: “The challenge is, I do not think palliative care, end-of-life care, in this country is good enough to give people a real choice.
“I worry about coercion and the risk that the right to die feels like a duty to die on the part of, particularly, older people.”
Good Morning Britain airs on ITV1 at 6am on weekdays.
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