Felicity Smart, a SPUC activist in Northamptonshire, has written this letter to Baroness Meacher ahead of the Assisted Dying Bill on Friday.

Dear Lady Meacher,

I am horrified and terrified at the possibility that your Assisted Dying Bill, to be debated on Friday, 22 October, might become law. I urge you to withdraw it. I can only think that the Bill must be due to your misunderstanding of sick and vulnerable people and what true compassion and care mean.

I speak from personal experience. I have had four major cancer operations and am still receiving treatment, but thanks to excellent medical care, loving support, and God's help, I am still able to write this email to you. For 12 years after my first diagnosis I helped at a women's cancer support group at St Thomas' Hospital, where we gave each other great encouragement and love. Many of us died in that time and I saw how palliative care can give a good death.

When people are dying, there is still every reason to help them feel valued. For example, a dear friend at the group, called Christine, became terminally ill and because she was very kind and considerate she began to feel that she was inconveniencing the carers and using up scarce resources that should be spent on people with a chance of survival. She felt that she should want to die. It would have been easy for me and others to encourage her dismal thoughts.  Instead, we assured her that this was money well spent. We pay taxes all our lives which entitle us to medical care, whatever the outcome. More importantly, as a human being, she was also entitled to our compassion and support.   

I am attempting to compress a huge subject into an email, which I hope you are reading. In countries where such laws as yours prevail, they cannot be controlled. They may start out with limits, but then are extended to an increasing range of situations affecting the sick, the disabled, the elderly - especially those with dementia - and other vulnerable people, who may be pressurised into asking for assisted suicide. If they are unable to make decisions, others who may have financial motives or wish to be rid of a burden, can decide on assisted suicide for them.    

My brother has severe dementia and lives in a care home. I can see how how some people could think he has little or no "quality of life" and would be better off dead. Those who think like this interpret their own negative feelings as belonging to the patient. But I can assure you that if you spend time with him, you will learn what pleases or distresses him and how you can help. I don't think it has ever occurred to him that he might be at risk of an unnatural death like assisted suicide, and I hope this will never be the case.

The pandemic has been a very sad time for elderly people. My brother has had Covid, but recovered and is still very much here.

I am by no means a lone voice, as I am the pro-life representative in a parish with a congregation of 350 people. I have just made a well-received appeal to them to oppose your Bill.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs. Felicity Smart

There’s still time to write to peers ahead of the Assisted Dying Bill. Please see information here.