Assisted dying is illegal in the UK, yet putting difficult choices in the patient’s hands is the only ethical approach
- This article has won The Guardian Foundation’s 2023 Hugo Young award, which champions political opinion writing among 19- to 25-year-olds
“Desperate for mum to die,” I texted my boyfriend in early March 2020. By then my mother, Mary-Anne, had spent months in a nursing home after two years of hospital treatments, surgeries, a ketogenic diet and a daily melange of drugs – all attempts to beat her brain cancer.
As her mobility decreased, my family were grateful to be allocated NHS funding for a bed in a local nursing home. Yet we soon discovered the lousy realities of end-of-life services in England: nursing homes are vastly ill equipped to administer palliative care, and patient decision-making about death is hamstrung by the UK’s restrictive laws on assisted dying.
Ella Creamer is a freelance politics and culture journalist
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