A cancer survivor once given as little as six months to live is speaking out against the assisted dying bill as it returns to the House of Commons today, recalling how suicidal thoughts followed her terminal diagnosis.
Karen O’Malley, a former NHS nurse, said she began planning her own death after doctors told her 11 years ago that she had an incurable illness and could have only six to nine months left to live.
Now 61, Ms O’Malley is cancer-free, married and a grandmother of four. She fears that, had assisted dying been presented as an option while she was at her most vulnerable, the outcome could have been very different.
On the other side of the argument is the daughter of a woman who pleaded with her to ‘put me out of my misery’ as cancer claimed her life, and who supports the proposed law.
Caroline Hearsey, 53, was 29 when her mother Joan died from oesophageal cancer at the age of 67, just six weeks after being diagnosed in November 2002.
Doctors had initially attributed Joan’s symptoms to indigestion, but her condition worsened with devastating speed.
Ms O’Malley and Ms Hearsey represent opposing sides of one of Parliament’s most emotionally charged debates, though both believe their position would help reduce suffering.
Supporters argue the bill would give terminally ill people greater dignity at the end of life. Opponents, however, warn that the legislation is ‘dangerous’ and could result in the unnecessary deaths of people with learning disabilities, victims of domestic abuse and those experiencing mental health difficulties.
Former NHS nurse Karen O’Malley said she began planning her death after being told 11 years ago that she had incurable cancer and only six to nine months to live.
Caroline Hearsey, 53, was 29 when she watched her mother, Joan, 67, die of oesophageal cancer within six weeks of a diagnosis in November 2002.
They have raised serious concerns about its safety, impact on vulnerable people and watered-down checks and balances ahead of a vote later today.
Childline founder and former broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen has added her voice to calls for the law to be changed, but actor Liz Carr is among campaigners calling on MPs to vote the Bill down amid safeguarding concerns.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has already confirmed he will not cast a vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill so as not to ‘unduly influence the debate’.
The legislation proposes allowing adults in England and Wales, with fewer than six months to live, to apply for an assisted death subject to the approval of two doctors and an expert panel.
While it passed two previous votes in the Commons under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, it ran out of time in the Lords in April – amid claims of a ‘denial of democracy’ from supporters who criticised some peers for tabling hundreds of amendments and effectively talking the Bill out.
Lauren Edwards, the MP who has re-introduced the Bill to the Commons, taking over from its previous sponsor Kim Leadbeater, has urged her fellow MPs to send the Bill back to the Lords ‘so that they can finish what they started’ in scrutinising the legislation.
While the Bill passed votes in 2024 and 2025, the second vote saw the majority in favour of the Bill narrow to 23 from 55.
This is thought in part to be due to certain promised safeguards in the original bill being dropped, including a requirement for all cases to be approved by a High Court judge.
Speaking today, Ms O’Malley described how she was left spiralling into deep depression after being told she had less than a year to live.
‘I now know that if some kind soul or health professional raised the option of assisted dying, being as vulnerable as I was with all hope crushed, I may well have taken it,’ she said.
Campaigners against the assisted dying bill protest in Parliament Square in central London on Friday
Campaigners in favour of the bill also gathered in Parliament Square on Friday, as MPs debated the bill inside the Commons
‘It chills me to think of what may have happened if it had been law then. I do think I may have made the choice to end my life.’
She fears that legalising the practice will lead to more people prematurely ending their lives when there is still a chance of survival.
‘I think anyone looking at me would have thought: ‘She knows what she wants, she’s not stupid, she’s really sad. And if she wants to end her life, so be it,’ she told The Telegraph.
‘But I was extremely vulnerable, and that’s my concern … that vulnerable people could be assessed as being of sound mind to make the decision to end their life.’
Ms O’Malley was diagnosed in 2015 after experiencing persistent stomach pain, and informed the cancer had metastasised to her liver and her peritoneum.
In the months that followed, she found herself considering overdosing and even researching Dignitas, an assisted dying clinic in Switzerland.
But a well-timed intervention from a friend prompted Ms O’Malley to seek mental health support and a second medical opinion. Using her husband’s family health insurance, a long road culminating in an eight-hour operation led to the cancer being removed, and she has been basically cancer free ever since.
It is cases such as these which have led many to fear legalising assisted dying will lead to preventable deaths in patients who may be able to sustain a good quality of life, or be completely cured.
Yet for others, the prospect of a long, drawn-out death is too much to bear.
Caroline Hearsey, from Fareham, near Portsmouth, told how her mother Joan made the difficult decision to end cancer treatment after having a stent fitted when her veins started to collapse before she started chemotherapy.
Towards the end of her life, she was unable to eat or drink, became constipated, and suffered severe discomfort from indigestion caused by the stent.
Ms Hearsey said she began asking friends and family: ‘Please, could you just bring a magic wand and put me out of my misery?’.
The marriage registrar said: ‘It was crushing to see this strong, stoic woman suffer so much at the end of her life, begging us to do something to end her suffering. I wish to this day I could have helped her.
‘My lasting memories of my beautiful mum are of her wasting away in absolute fear and horror, begging for her suffering to end.
‘If I could help give people the option of having that magic wand, what a legacy that would be for Mum all these years later.’
During the treatment, her mother was fitted with a stent, which she found intolerable, and a nurse later tried to insert a PICC line for chemotherapy, but by then Joan was too ill, very weak, and her veins were starting to collapse.
Ms Hearsey’s mother Joan when she was young – her painful death still haunts her daughter, who is backing the bill
She made the decision that she did not want treatment and spent the last weeks of her life at home, cared for by her family.
Although her mother was in constant pain, Ms Hearsey said the worst thing was the unbearable discomfort and lack of control.
She said: ‘There was nothing that could help alleviate mum’s symptoms, and we felt utterly helpless.
‘She was in immense pain. It was horrendous and really degrading for her.’
Describing her last days, Ms Hearsey added: ‘I will never forget it. It was harrowing.
‘To be trapped, as my mum was, I would not wish on anyone. I desperately don’t want my family to see me like that in my dying days.
‘Joan was stoic and strong, free-spirited and open-minded. She was brave and beautiful.’
The family had always shared frank and open discussions around assisted dying, and say if there had been the choice, Joan would have pursued it.
Ms Hearsey said: ‘If I knew I had a life-limiting condition but also had the option to safely and calmly end my life with my loved ones present, ending that nightmare, I believe the remainder of my life could be lived peacefully and without fear.
‘We are not changing outcomes, simply allowing a kinder and gentler journey to that inevitable end.’
Medical colleges, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Physicians have also raised ‘concerns’ about the Bill and safeguarding society’s most vulnerable against coercion.
But Sarah Wootton, chief executive of pro-change campaign group Dignity in Dying, said: ‘The current law creates secrecy, fear and trauma.
‘This Friday, MPs can replace it with honesty, compassion and choice.’
Mr Burnham previously said he believed the funding of palliative care needs to be fixed before consideration can be given to legalising assisted dying.
Bill sponsor Ms Edwards has insisted that ‘we can and should do both’.
Ahead of the debate around 70 MPs had put their names forward to speak on the Bill – with the chamber’s green benches almost full – and a vote is expected to take place by 2.30pm.
Opening Friday’s debate, she told MPs: ‘We can and we must improve both palliative care and support assisted dying.
‘We must grasp that opportunity in front of us to create a holistic end of life care system that will deliver choice and dignity for every single one of our constituents.’
She said that, because of the four-year implementation period in the Bill, assisted dying would not be available across the two nations until 2031 at the earliest.
Dame Karen Bradley, a Conservative former minister, led opposition voices to the Bill as she urged her fellow MPs to consider ‘whether this Bill, in this form, on the evidence before us now today, is safe enough for Parliament to force into law’.
She said people who had previously voted in favour of the Bill should feel ‘no shame’ in opposing the draft law, saying there would be ‘something profoundly wrong with a Parliament in which members felt bound by an earlier vote, regardless of everything they’d learned since’.
Quoting the National Down Syndrome Policy group, she said the Bill ‘hopes for the best rather than prepares for the worst’.
Others to speak out against the bill include Labour MP Ashley Dalton, who has terminal stage four metastatic breast cancer, and warned that legalisation could be tantamount to offering patients early death, or a bad one.
‘While honourable and right honourable members were debating the issue, I was grappling with my own terminal diagnosis,’ the Labour MP for West Lancashire said.
She said, if the Bill were written into the statute book, patients seeking an assisted death should have their psychological health assessed ‘at the beginning of the process’, with check-ups along the way.
The former health minister also said: ‘In the campaign around this Bill, it seems to me that it’s being implied that a person with a terminal illness will have a dreadful, painful death unless they have access to assisted dying – and it’s simply not true.
‘Palliative care in the UK is excellent.
‘Far too many people do not have access to palliative care that they need but the idea that it is not possible to alleviate pain and discomfort is false.’
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