Helping Dad Die: A Daughter’s Story
In the U.K., Britons with terminal illnesses or incurable diseases have nowhere to go if they want help to die. A daughter’s personal story about finding a way to ease her father’s suffering and the right-to-die debate:
Had my father lived in, say, Utrecht rather than the West Country, he could simply have turned to his GP for help. Both doctor-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia have been available since 1981 for Dutch people with a terminal illness or suffering severely from an incurable disease, and account for about 3 per cent of deaths in the Netherlands.
Other European countries have followed the Dutch lead: doctor-assisted suicide is available for the terminally ill and people with conditions like my father’s in Luxembourg and Switzerland, as is voluntary euthanasia in Belgium. And in the US, four states (Washington, Montana, Oregon and Vermont) offer doctor-assisted suicide to the terminally ill. Yet only one country is willing to help terminally ill, severely disabled or elderly and seriously ill foreigners – and, with the assistance of one of the three organisations non-nationals can access, more than 250 Britons have now died there. My father was right: he would have to go to Switzerland.