‘I want a choice’: terminally ill women urge early Commons vote on assisted dying

From left: Helen Skelton, Kate Rasmussen and Sophie Blake are throwing their voices behind the campaign of the charity Dignity in Dying. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Two women with incurable cancer are urging the next UK prime minister to allow a vote on assisted dying in the first 100 days of the new parliament and free them from fear of a painful death.

Sophie Blake, 51, a former Sky Sports reporter and Helen Skelton, 56, a psychotherapist, who both have stage four cancer, said the next prime minister should make a free vote a priority to stop people having to choose between unnecessary suffering, going to Dignitas in Switzerland, or taking their own lives at home.

Both women, who have children, are allergic to opioids and fear the suffering they may face and that their loved ones may witness. They were backed by a third woman, Kate Rasmussen, 42, who has been successfully treated for breast cancer but fears it may return. Neither the Conservatives nor Labour promised a vote in their manifestos, despite both leaders indicating they were willing for the law to be changed.

The women were all friends of Paola Marra, who had bowel and breast cancer and in March shared with Guardian readers her journey alone to take her own life in Switzerland. Skelton said she may have ended her life weeks or months earlier than was necessary.

They spoke out to continue Marra’s campaign with the charity Dignity in Dying for legislation allowing terminally ill adults capable of making an independent choice, with the consent of two doctors and a judge, to have the right to die. More than 25,000 people have signed a petition calling for a full parliamentary vote, which Marra arranged to be circulated after her death.

The women’s call for a swift vote came as the former supreme court president Lady Hale this week criticised parliament for failing to pass reforms.

Marking a decade since her court decided the case of Tony Nicklinson, who sought the right to take his own life, she said it was “cruel and inhumane” to force people in this position to go on living against their will.

In 2012 Nicklinson, who described his life as “a living nightmare” after being paralysed from the neck down by a stroke, lost a high court battle to die with the help of a doctor. He died shortly afterwards after stopping eating.

In 2014, five of the nine supreme court justices held that the court could make a declaration that the current law banning assisted suicide was incompatible with human rights. But three of the five said parliament should be given the opportunity of putting things right first, while four said that it was a matter for parliament alone.

Hale said this week: “Parliament has not put things right, despite all the evidence that the public would support a change in the law.”

But campaigners against assisted dying, such as the group Care Not Killing, are urging a greater focus on palliative care and argue that an assisted suicide law would “undermine the right to life and put vulnerable people at risk of coming under pressure to end their lives prematurely”. They fear that once a “right to die” is established, activists will apply pressure to expand the categories of people who qualify, including those with mental health issues and children.

In March, Keir Starmer promised Esther Rantzen, the former TV presenter who has terminal cancer and wants the right to assisted dying, that a Labour government would make time for a vote in the first parliament. He said he was “personally in favour of changing the law”. But the party disappointed pro-choice campaigners when, in common with the Conservatives, it failed to include a promise of a vote in its manifesto.

Rishi Sunak this month said he was not “in principle” against changing the law on assisted dying. He said: “It’s just a question of having the safeguards in place and that’s where people have had questions in the past.” The Tory manifesto said “debates on assisted dying should never distract from the importance of delivering high quality palliative care services”.

But Skelton said by that the time the legislation was “written, made and passed, it may well be too late for me”. She said Labour’s failure to promise a vote was “incredibly disappointing”.

“The sooner it can happen the more likely it is that it can benefit my death,” she said.

She said nothing would change the fact that she feared dying and leaving her family, but legalising assisted dying would lift the fear of how that was going to happen. “I would feel free,” she said.

Blake said: “I’m a single mum to a 17-year-old girl and I never want [my suffering] to be her last memory. I’m really close to my mum and my sister. I don’t want any of them to be scarred and traumatised by me suffering. At the moment, terminally ill people face what could be the most horrific horrendous death and [a law change] will be able to give people peace of mind.”

Rasmussen added: “I just want to have the choice to decide myself. I think it’s so cruel that we don’t have that. I think it’s discrimination, because who can afford paying £15,000 [the amount Marra spent to go to Dignitas]? I don’t have that. And when the time comes if I don’t have that, what should I do? Should I try and medicate myself? People do turn to horrible situations that could be avoided because this is not legal yet.”