Christie Arntsen, whose incurable breast cancer has returned for the fifth time, feels robbed by peers who have derailed plans to legalise assisted dying, with Sky News projecting the bill is likely to fail. MPs voted to legalise assisted dying by 314 to 291 last year, but the bill has stalled in the House of Lords due to filibustering by opposing peers. A handful of peers have put down 1,200 amendments to block the assisted dying bill, and it is expected to run out of time when the parliamentary session ends next month.
Christie Arntsen described the situation as undemocratic, expressing mortification at the Lords' power to override MPs elected by the population. The law would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death, subject to approval by two doctors and a panel. Dame Esther Rantzen is battling terminal lung cancer that has spread, with her life-preserving drugs no longer being effective, and she intends to travel to a Swiss clinic for assisted dying but cannot take her family with her.
It just blows my mind that the House of Lords have the power to mess up something (that was passed by) MPs, who have been voted for by the population. That just seems so undemocratic. I'm absolutely mortified at what's gone on. I feel like it's not democracy in action and I can't understand why it's been allowed to happen.
Dame Esther Rantzen described the amendments as blatant sabotage aimed at blocking rather than scrutinizing the bill. Whether the Parliament Act will be invoked to bypass the House of Lords and pass the bill is unknown, as is the current status of any last-minute efforts to save it before the session ends.
I'm going to be dying. I'm going to be in the last weeks of my life. I'm not saying I want to go now. I couldn't go now, but say I was terminally ill, I wouldn't go straight away, I would wait till I was in pain or it was too much, and then I could say: ‘That’s enough now.’ What I don't understand is, why would that person believe they had the right to make me suffer for longer than I had to? Why is that okay?