Dame Esther Rantzen was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer back in 2023 and has been campaigning for the legalisation of assisted dying in the UK.
Dame Esther Rantzen has given an update on her health after her battle with stage four lung cancer.
The 85-year-old spoke to Kate Garraway and Paul Brand on Wednesday’s Good Morning Britain (April 1) regarding the assisted dying bill.
With the bill’s deadline drawing closer, discussions on amendments and its expected examination by the House of Lords during this period, the pair touched on the proposed legislation.
Kate said: “Both supporters and opponents of the bill have now acknowledged that the legislation would not become law of this current session of Parliament.”
Ben added, “Backers of the bill have blamed opponents in the Lords for slowing down progress because they’ve tabled more than 1000 amendments.”
Sharing her thoughts on the matter, Dame Esther said the bill is unlikely to become law and that it’s ‘very disappointing’.
She added, “It is clearly filibustering. 1,200 amendments have been put down; the desire behind the handful of peers who have inspired those amendments is not to slow down the bill, but to block it.
“They have achieved their aim, which means that I haven’t got a choice. Anybody who is terminally ill, over the age of 18, with six months left to live, deserves the choice, if life becomes unbearable, to request assistance to shorten their deaths.”
During their discussion, Kate questioned how Kate is currently doing, noting that she’s made different arrangements for herself.
She replied: “Mysteriously, in spite of the fact that the drugs have stopped working, the cancer has allowed me to live this long, and I’ve never been given six months to live because my oncologist says he just doesn’t know how much longer I’ve got.
“So, I will obviously keep battling, not on my own behalf, but on behalf of all the future generations that deserve a proper, compassionate, humanitarian bill.
“In the olden days, before Doctor Shipman murdered people, doctors used to ease people out of life. That’s what we need, we need the opportunity to ask for assistance, not to shorten our lives, but to shorten our deaths.”
Writing in the Observer earlier this year, Dame Esther confessed she’ll have to go to Dignitas alone as the bill won’t be passed in the UK in time for her.
She wrote: “I’m definitely not going to live long enough to see the assisted dying bill become law – so if my life becomes unbearably painful and I long for a quick, pain-free death, I will have to go to Dignitas in Switzerland, alone.”
Good Morning Britain is available to watch weekdays on ITV from 6am.
