British lady to journey to Switzerland to die by assisted suicide after son’s demise

A 56-year-old British mom is touring to Switzerland to finish her life by assisted suicide after the demise of her solely son.

Wendy Duffy informed the New York Post she paid $13,500 to the Swiss assisted-dying nonprofit the Pegasos clinic.

Duffy’s son, Marcus, died at age 23 4 years in the past after choking on a tomato lodged in his windpipe whereas sleeping. Nine months later, unable to deal with her grief, she tried suicide by overdose and was positioned on a ventilator for 2 weeks.

She informed the Daily Mail suicide is the one means her “spirit can be free.” She additionally stated no quantity of medicine or remedy could make her complete once more, and he or she “can’t wait” to die. She added: “I could step off a motorway bridge or a tower block but that would leave anyone finding me dealing with that for the rest of their lives.”

She stated she has chosen her deathbed outfit and requested that Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile” play as she dies. Her belongings will probably be donated afterward.

Duffy stated she plans to name her 4 sisters and two brothers from Switzerland to say goodbye. “It will be a hard call where I’ll say goodbye and thank them,” she stated. “But they will get it. They know. Honestly, 100%, they know that I’m not happy, that I don’t want to be here.”

Assisted suicide is authorized in Switzerland, even for bodily wholesome individuals. On its web site, Pegasos says it “believes that it is the human right of every rational adult of sound mind, regardless of state of health, to choose the manner and timing of their death.”

Duffy’s case follows the recent death by euthanasia of 25-year-old Noelia Castillo in Spain. On March 26, the young woman was euthanized over her father’s objections. The case sparked national debate in Spain, where euthanasia has been legal since 2021.

The Church in Spain called Castillo’s death “a societal defeat.”

In a statement, members of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference’s Subcommittee for the Family and Defense of Life said Castillo’s “story reflects an accumulation of personal suffering and institutional failings that challenge the whole of society.”

Timeʼs up for right-to-die bill in UK

Meanwhile, a right-to-die bill has stalled in the U.K. Parliament. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill ran out of parliamentary time and therefore failed in the House of Lords on April 24.

The archbishop of Liverpool, John Sherrington, said he was grateful to “all those Parliamentarians who have worked tirelessly to preserve the dignity of every human life and ensure that end-of life care remains rooted in compassion and respect until the natural end of life.”

The Catholic Church teaches that suicide and euthanasia are gravely immoral.

In a 2024 message to a palliative care symposium, Pope Francis known as euthanasia “a failure of love.” He recalled when he said beforehand that assisted suicide and euthanasia represent a “false compassion.”

“‘[C]ompassion,’ a word that means ‘suffering with,’ does not involve the intentional ending of a life but rather the willingness to share the burdens of those facing the end stages of our earthly pilgrimage,” he said.

In St. John Paul II’s 1999 deal with to the Pontifical Academy for Life, “Love and Solidarity for the Dying,” he stated: “No one can arbitrarily choose whether to live or die; the absolute master of such a decision is the Creator alone.”

In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, he said: “suicide … involves the rejection of love of self and the renunciation of the obligation of justice and charity towards one’s neighbor … In its deepest reality, suicide represents a rejection of God’s absolute sovereignty over life and death.” Euthanasia is likewise condemned as “a grave violation of the law of God.”

He also calls euthanasia “a false mercy, and indeed a disturbing ‘perversion’ of mercy. True ‘compassion’ leads to sharing anotherʼs pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear.”

He continued: “Moreover, the act of euthanasia appears all the more perverse if it is carried out by those, like relatives, who are supposed to treat a family member with patience and love, or by those, such as doctors, who by virtue of their specific profession are supposed to care for the sick person even in the most painful terminal stages.”

While the Church says euthanasia and assisted suicide are by no means permissible, it helps palliative care. According to Dian Backoff, former govt director of Catholic Hospice for Catholic Health Services, palliative care is supposed to deal with “what the whole patient wants during the treatment of an illness,” whether or not or not the affected person is terminally sick or coping with a long-term affliction.

“Palliative care, then, is a genuine form of compassion, for it responds to suffering, whether physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual, by affirming the fundamental and inviolable dignity of every person, especially the dying, and helping them to accept the inevitable moment of passage from this life to eternal life,” Pope Francis stated in 2024.