‘I’ve chosen to die even though I’m not ill’
Jacqueline Joncquel has made a controversial decision that not everyone will agree with…
Jacqueline Joncquel doesn’t have a terminal illness. She hasn’t been diagnosed with a degenerative disease, nor does she suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. On the contrary, she is perfectly healthy.
Yet, the 75-year-old is one of almost 1,800 people who have planned their own deaths at clinics – including Dignitas – in Switzerland. She wishes to end her life on her own terms before she becomes, as she phrases it, ‘a burden on society and her loved ones’.
Although she has only just hit her mid-70s, Jacqueline has spent years campaigning all over the world for the right to die, via assisted suicide, for those aged over 75, even when they’re not terminally ill.
While euthanasia is illegal in the UK, it isn’t in various other countries, including Holland, Switzerland, Canada and certain US states. And more than 300 British people have travelled to Switzerland to end their lives at the Dignitas clinic.
The first British person to do so died there in 2002. The unnamed man, with terminal cancer, travelled to the clinic and drank a lethal solution of barbiturates to end his life, with his son and daughter by his side. This is a journey that Jacqueline wants to follow.
‘I might not look it, but the harsh truth is, I’m 75. I’m entering the ‘winter’ of my life. There are very few people of that age who don’t have something chronically wrong with them.
‘I’ve had a good life, but things are happening to me. I’m already losing my memory. I keep forgetting important things, not just a name or a face. I’ve seen it in other people over the past 10 years. I know what the first signs are when someone starts to lose their lucidity.’
Jacqueline watched her mother endure a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer before passing away. She also saw her father succumb to Alzheimer’s disease, nursing him until she eventually lost him to the cruel condition.
‘I’ve looked death in the face many times, and a slow, agonising death is really horrific. Of course, I’m afraid – I have a survival instinct, too. I don’t want to die, but neither do I want to risk ending up in a nursing home or in an incredible amount of pain, reliant on others.
‘So, I’m training my brain to become unafraid of death. I do something every day that scares me. It’s why I recently decided to paraglide from a 3,000m glacier. I’m doing this
so the day I die I won’t be scared, either.’
Jacqueline has two sons and a partner, but denies that she is being selfish – quite the opposite, in fact. She has spoken to all three about her decision and her sons understand and accept it. Her partner, a fellow campaigner, shares her beliefs.
Jacqueline, who says she has been everywhere in the world she wants to visit, already knows how she will spend her last day alive.
‘I’ll have already said my goodbyes to my two children. I don’t want any tears. If they got upset and cried, then I would, too, and I don’t want it to be like that. I want a deliciously perfect final 24 hours.
‘I’ll drink enough vodka to be nicely drunk. I’d love an attractive young man with me. I don’t want to make love, but just to enjoy his presence and feel some desire. Then, I will be ready to die in Switzerland via assisted suicide.’
Yet Jacqueline is well aware that, to take your own life, strict requirements must be met.
‘ You have to be completely lucid, and able to state your name, date of birth and where you were born,’ she says.
‘On a practical level, I need to be able to swallow the medication or apply the intravenous injection myself. If I’m not capable of doing these things on my own, then no one will help me to end my life. I do not want to risk that.’ Assisted suicide is currently illegal in the UK, and doctors found to be aiding any such actions can be jailed for up to 14 years under the Suicide Act 1961. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) received 145 cases recorded as assisted suicide between April 2009 and July 2018.
Critics, including the British association Dignity In Dying, say that it is cruel to force people to go abroad. They argue it is wrong for people to travel a long way at a point in their life where they are in great pain and distress – and it estimates that travelling overseas to die costs an eye-watering £10,000.
Retired lecturer Noel Conway, 68, from Shrewsbury, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2014. Over the past four years, he has fought for the right to an assisted death, but has been unsuccessful.
On 27 November 2018, the Supreme Court rejected the possibility of another hearing. Conway, who was too ill to attend, slammed the ruling as ‘ barbaric’.
The decision flies in the face of current medical and public opinion. The British
Medical Journal explains that ‘most UK doctors support legislation for assisted dying, while a 2015 poll showed that about 80 per cent of the UK public support a change in the law’. For 10 years, Jacqueline has been campaigning for the right to die in Europe with EXIT in Switzerland and the pro-assisted suicide group ADMD-F in France. She feels it is ‘inevitable’ that, in the future, people will be able to choose when they die. ‘The choice to die at the end of my – or your – life is vital,’ she says. ‘Just as women got to vote and choose to have an abortion, so we will be able to decide when we’ve had enough. Thankfully, nowadays, women can give birth without pain, so why should we die in pain?
‘The choice should be left to the person whose body it is. The options at the end of life are grim,’ adds Jacqueline. ‘From being chopped into to remove tumours and undergoing chemotherapy, to being placed in an old people’s home because there is no one to look after us… I’d rather choose when to call it quits, wouldn’t you?’
‘Nowadays women can give birth without pain, so why should we die in pain?’