Assisted dying should be legal, says Royle Family’s Johnston
SUE JOHNSTON, star of the TV sitcom The Royle Family, has said that assisted dying should be legalised, although she may not personally choose the option.
Johnston, 80, who also starred in the soap opera Brookside, is one of the latest prominent figures to speak out in favour of changing the law to allow the terminally ill to end their lives.
She said that much like putting sick pets out of their misery, assisted dying would spare people from suffering.
However, she warned that any legal changes could be exploited to “get rid of people” and insisted that strict safeguards would be necessary.
Speaking to Saga magazine, she said: “I think it’s an option that people should be able to have. It’s their life, their choice. I don’t know whether I’d want it myself, but then I’m not in a position where life is intolerable,
“Of course, people can be ruthless and they may take advantage of a change in law to get rid of people, so it would all have to be safeguarded. But it would be, there’d be laws.”
She said: “I have animals and when they’re in terrible pain, we put them to sleep. It’s heartbreaking but we do it for their sake, because we want to spare them the suffering.”
Johnston said her German shepherd Betsy was recently put down as “she was just in such agony”.
Her comments come after the revelation that the late Dame Diana Rigg wanted the option to end her life while suffering through cancer, and supported a legislative change to make such an option legal.
Actress Susan Hampshire, who gave up acting to care for her dying husband and two older sisters, has similarly urged MPS to rewrite laws that ban assisted dying. Dame Esther Rantzen has also called for a Parliamentary vote on the issue.
A Private Member’s Bill introduced by Lady Meacher failed when it was not given time to be read by MPS in 2022, but in 2015 the Commons voted overwhelmingly against a Bill which would have allowed doctors to help terminally ill people end their lives.