A dying Brit has issued a heartbreaking appeal to politicians to change our “cruel ban” on assisted dying as she prepares to travel more than 11,000 miles to end her life.
Avril Barker, 51, who has terminal cancer, will have to undertake a gruelling 30-hour journey to New Zealand - where she has dual citizenship - to end her life on her own terms.
Calling for politicians to listen to the voices of suffering Brits on the final day of a Health Select Committee inquiry into assisted dying, she told The Mirror: “While the Government fails to act on changing this cruel ban on assisted dying, every year hundreds of dying people are taking their own lives, or like me, are looking to travel to a more compassionate country to have the death they want.”
Assisted dying was legalised in New Zealand in 2021 following a nationwide referendum which found overwhelming public support for a law change.
A UK poll revealed this week that 74% of Brits support a law change on assisted dying.
Asked what they would like to see happen following the Commons inquiry,
which closes today (FRI), 36% of Brits wanted to see a bill brought forward immediately.
While 25% would like to see Parliament make time for a free vote and 18% want the issue to be explored in a citizens assembly.
Avril, from Ripon, Yorkshire, was diagnosed with mucosal melanoma in November 2021 as she was nursing her mother who was dying of bowel cancer.
The extremely aggressive cancer has a five-year survival rate of only 14%.
The former business co-operative worker, who is being treated with palliative immunotherapy and radiotherapy, told The Mirror: “I decided not to tell my mum the extent of my diagnosis, but watching her die in pain was very confronting to me and made up my mind that when I am in the final months of this illness, I will go out on my own terms.
“I am terrified about what will happen to me if I don’t leave. I don’t want to die in pain and lose who I am.
“Seeing my mum on strong pain medication, spending most of her final days asleep and not being able to eat was devastating and a wake-up call to me.
“Palliative care in the UK is excellent, but for some people it can’t do enough to relieve their pain – what if that happens to me? At least if I were in New Zealand I’d have the option of another way out.”
Devastatingly, it means leaving her elderly dad behind as he is too old to make the long journey.
“This is the hardest part of the whole situation and it breaks my heart,” she added.
“I don’t have the time to wait for the law to change in the UK.
“The government must listen to dying people like me and fix this broken law. I hope our voices are heard as part of the Health Select Committee inquiry and the reality of the ban on assisted dying is understood.”
Under current laws, assisting or encouraging a suicide is punishable by up to 14 years in prison in England and Wales.
Sarah Wootton, Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying, said: “Avril’s experience shows why the ban on assisted dying is broken.
“By failing to provide dying people the option of assisted dying, we are effectively outsourcing death to countries with more compassionate laws.
“The Health and Social Care Select Committee’s assisted dying inquiry must listen to the people most affected by the current law, dying people like Avril who currently have few choices: they can face uncertain and often painful deaths, like Avril’s mother, take matters in their own hands with no medical guidance, or travel to seek an assisted death abroad.
“It’s time for the UK to follow in the footsteps of New Zealand and give terminally ill people the choice and compassion they deserve at the end of their lives.”
