A pro-assisted suicide group in France has caused outrage after it used an image of Princess Diana’s wrecked car in which she was fatally wounded in 1997.
The pro-assisted suicide advert promoted by French activist group ADMD included the caption: “Diana. She did not choose her death… in 2024, we should have the choice.”
Diana was killed after the car in which she was travelling crashed at high speed in Paris’s Pont de l’Alma tunnel.
Friends of Diana have slammed the campaign image as “disgusting” and “repugnant”. A Kensington Palace insider said that the advert “plumbed the very lowest depths of bad taste”. A friend of Diana, Petronella Wyatt, called the ad “vile. It’s also completely irrelevant to their argument, because none of the people involved, particularly Diana, wanted to die at all.”
The ad was released following the announcement of an assisted suicide bill promoted by President Emmanuel Macron. However, ADMD was displeased that the proposed legislation would apply to certain adults with terminal illnesses and not all people wishing to die.
The advert including Diana’s crashed car has since been withdrawn.
SPUC comment
A SPUC spokesperson said: “This bizarre, manipulative advert shows how far some campaigners will go to promote their similarly ill-judged effort to legalise assisted suicide. This debate should not be reduced to one image or an oversimplified slogan that ignores the facts and real-world horror stories.
“In Canada, for example, where thousands of people have died because of assisted suicide, the ‘choice’ to die is far from being a free decision – as we saw in the case of the cancer patient who felt compelled to choose death after waiting too long for chemotherapy.
“People and groups campaigning for assisted suicide often ignore these cases that expose the danger that such laws pose to vulnerable people. Rather than focusing on the unfortunate victim of a car crash, ADMD should address the real issues that threaten everyday citizens.”
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