Hampshire in plea to change law banning assisted dying
SUSAN HAMPSHIRE, who gave up acting to care for her dying husband and two older sisters, has urged MPS to rewrite “cruel” laws on assisted dying.
The star of The Forsyte Saga and Monarch of the Glen said that a “democratic, civilised” country would allow conscientious clinicians to provide compassionate care at the end of life.
In a harrowing statement to MPS, she said she had been forced to witness her sister starve herself to death because there was no legal way to end her life.
“I have witnessed, hour by hour and minute by minute, my loved ones’ wishes for a dignified end being denied,” she said. “That trauma will never leave me.”
She follows TV presenters Dame Esther Rantzen and Baroness Joan Bakewell in calling for a change in the law. George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, also backs legalisation of assisted dying, saying it was “profoundly Christian” to ensure no one suffers against their will.
Ms Hampshire made her comments in a submission to the Commons health select committee, which is considering the issue of assisted dying.
She said: “In 2018, my sister, then 94, broke her hip and following complications, came home with palliative care support. The carers were unable to relieve her suffering. ‘If only there was a pill to end it all,’ she said often, as she begged for help to end her pain. She wanted ‘out’. Her only course of action was to starve herself to death and she died many weeks later. Watching her deteriorate and suffer was truly unbearable.”
Ms Hampshire recalled that two years later her other sister, also 94, “lay dying in her bed with multiple illnesses resulting from rheumatoid arthritis”.
She recalled: “I can still hear her tiny voice pleading with me to help her ‘skip this bit’. It was cruel to deny her the dignity she begged for and so deserved.”