CAMPAIGNERS for and against assisted dying rallied outside Parliament today ahead of an MPs’ debate on changing the law.

Celebrities including Esther Rantzen, who announced her support for assisted dying after revealing she has stage four lung cancer last year, Dame Prue Leith and broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby urged MPs to change the law so terminally ill people can legally be helped by doctors to kill themselves.

But activists opposed to changing the law from Not Dead Yet and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) warned legalising assisted suicide would put vulnerable people in danger.

“We want assistance to live,” DPAC activist Paula Peters told the Morning Star. 

“This government are not about allowing us to live in dignity. They don’t want us to live full stop. They would rather we just disappeared.

“What concerns us as well is that families will pressurise their disabled members, maybe for monetary gain or put the idea in your head that you’re a burden.”

She pointed to countries where assisted dying is legal and pressure has been put on disabled and sick people to end their lives: “A 52-year-old Paralympian in Canada asked for a stairlift — was offered euthanasia. A woman, 51, who couldn’t afford better living conditions to help with chronic back pain, euthanised in Canada. We don’t want that here.”

Campaigner Nikki Kenward said if doctors were given the right to help her die as a disabled person, she would be uncomfortable “at the way they looked at me, wondering what’s going through their head.”

And palliative care consultant Dominic Whitehouse said: “As a doctor I worry. We miss coercion, we miss elder abuse and other forms of ‘gentle persuasion.’

“Most doctors in the UK do not want to do this. The BMA survey clearly showed that in 2020, and doctors like myself, working in palliative care, care of the elderly, geriatricians and GPs are most strongly against it. 

“So the chances of the doctor giving you assisted dying knowing you are very slim. If you look at figures from Oregon, the average time of being known to a doctor before you received assisted dying was six weeks — how can they properly assess the risks of coercion or other abuse?”