In an article in the Daily Mail, Dorries described how her husband went “from desperately wanting to take a trip to Dignitas, from imploring the girls to make it happen, to wishing that he hadn’t refused that chemotherapy – because it would have given him a few more precious months”.
In 2019, when Dorries’ husband Paul was diagnosed with bowel cancer and told he had just four months to live, he told Dorries he wanted to end his life at Dignitas in Switzerland.
However, reflecting on her husband’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent death at home surrounded by his family, Dorries concludes that “His death WAS a good one… and, despite his fears, he DID enjoy his last days…
“His last words to me were that the past few months had been the best of his life, and he didn’t want to leave us.”
Dorries’ experience ultimately reinforced her opinion that assisted suicide is wrong and should not be legalised in the UK, despite growing calls from activists, including Esther Rantzen.
“No need for anyone to have a bad death”, writes Dorries
Dorries, who was MP for Mid Bedfordshire between 2005 to 2023, says that, despite people’s understandable fears, “there is no need for anyone to have a bad death or to die in pain today”.
Moreover, she states that assisted suicide “we would be asking doctors to kill. This would be a massive societal change with immense consequences. There would then be pressure to expand the eligibility criteria to perhaps include the disabled, the young and the depressed, as has happened in Canada and Holland…
“Those who feel they are a burden on their loved ones could feel pressured to avail themselves of euthanasia when they fall ill.”
We must not give in to fear
Daniel Frampton, SPUC’s Editorial Officer, said: “It is important that society does not give in to fear and rob countless individuals and families of the precious time that is left to them. Nadine Dorries’ moving account of her last weeks with her husband Paul ultimately proved that fear of a ‘bad death’ to be mistaken.
“If assisted suicide is legalised, thousands (if not millions) of vulnerable individuals would be ushered into early graves – and an expectation to die would be created, burdening the dying with a terrible decision to make rather than allowing them to enjoy their final days and months with their loved ones.
“Canada is just one example of how assisted suicide, once granted, leads to more death and heartbreak. This is not compassion but a turning to death by default as an easy but harmful solution to the challenges of sickness, old age, mental illness and even poverty.”
A Canadian horror story
There were 13,241 state-sanctioned assisted suicides in Canada in 2022, reported; a third of these individuals said they feared being a burden on family and friends. The death toll since 2016, when assisted suicide was introduced, now stands at 44,958 (as of December 2022).
In 2022, an official memo warned doctors in the Canadian province of Quebec to respect the limits of the law on assisted suicide following a huge 54% rise in deaths, including memo, all in the space of twelve months.
Last year, SPUC reported on the case of a Canadian doctor who helped kill 400 people through assisted suicide through assisted suicide, some on the grounds of “loneliness and poverty”.
Numerous other horror stories have emerged from Canada in recent years, including dozen veterans being offered assisted suicide. Even the noted medical journal The Lancet remarked on the alarming rise of assisted suicides in Canada.
