Last Rights: The Case for Assisted Dying

In September 2019, Mavis Eccleston was acquitted of murdering her 81-year-old husband Dennis. Dennis had terminal cancer and had taken an overdose of pain medication to end his own life. The turmoil that followed for Mavis and her family sheds light on the brutal and ignored impact of the UK’s failure to legalise assisted dying.

Why does the UK abandon dying people and outsource this problem to facilities in Switzerland while legislators across the USA, Canada and Australia have drafted laws to give dying people choice over how and when they die?

Sarah Wootton, CEO of the campaign group Dignity in Dying, explains why assisted dying’s time has come. Drawing parallels with issues such as women’s suffrage, reproductive rights and equal marriage, Wootton exposes the hypocrisy of the arguments put forward by those who oppose change and examines how a broken status quo has been imposed against the wishes of dying people for too long.

Bringing to light the heart-breaking testimony of those who have witnessed unimaginable suffering at the end of life, Wootton builds a case for why the law needs urgent reform, questions how future generations will judge our failure to take action and issues a call to arms for people to share their truth and demand change.