Good afternoon friend,
Two years ago today we launched our Compassion Is Not A Crime campaign. Amazing campaigners, Joy Munns, Zoe Marley and Ann Whaley told their stories of assisting their loved ones to die on their own terms - and their experiences of being criminalised for their acts of love.
After two years of campaigning in the face of extraordinary obstacles, we've reached an important milestone on the journey to a more compassionate law. Today, the Crown Prosecution Service has announced proposed changes to their guidance for prosecutors with regard to deaths as a result of ‘mercy killings’ and suicide pacts. It is only right to differentiate acts of compassion from serious crimes and this is promising progress on the road to law change.
The CPS is consulting on these changes in order to avoid putting someone through a trial if their actions were clearly motivated by compassion to help a loved one end their life, if this was their settled wish.
This is what your commitment and dedication to change can achieve. This is a clear indication that the ban on assisted dying does not work in practice. Prosecutors know that these cases aren’t in the public interest and that they need to change their approach. MPs must sit up and listen. Only you can make sure they do. Please support our long-term goal of a more compassionate law and join Dignity in Dying as a member today.
Today’s announcement is significant but it does not go far enough in providing dying people with the comfort and peace of mind that a safeguarded assisted dying law would. I spoke to Joy Munns this week, whose mother Mavis was put on trial for murder after helping her husband Dennis to take an overdose to end his suffering from terminal bowel cancer. She said,
“What we really need is an assisted dying law for this country. This new guidance might have saved our Mom from a trial, but she would still have been backed into a corner, having to break the law when she’d never done so in her life. Dad wanted a proper choice. On the night he died he was howling like a wounded animal. The law put her in an impossible position. It must be properly reformed so that people like Dad can have the choice that so many dying people want.”
2022 is going to be a big year for the campaign for Dignity in Dying and I’m so grateful for every step you take with us along the way. If you can, take your next step today, and join as a member.
My sincere thanks for all you have done to get us here.
Together we will change the law.
