Lewes author's daughter tells of terminally ill mother's secret death plans (From The Argus)

Lewes author's daughter tells of terminally ill mother's secret death plans

10:33am Wednesday 29th July 2009 in News

The daughter of a leading Lewes novelist called today for a change in the law to allow medically-assisted suicide after describing how her "brave" mother planned her own death in secret.

Jessica Hodge said Jane Aiken Hodge, who wrote a string of bestselling historical romances, died aged 91 last month after taking an overdose of pills.

She told The Times that her mother had not told her family about her plans to take her own life for fear they could be charged with aiding and abetting a suicide, an offence under English law punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment.

After taking the overdose, her mother lay in bed, alive but unconscious, for four days, watched by her daughters and visited by a GP, before she finally died, Ms Hodge said.

The novelist, who was reportedly in good health, left strict instructions with her GP and in a letter that no attempt be made to revive her.

She also had a "do not resuscitate" card when she was found unconscious last month by a neighbour at her cottage in Lewes.

Ms Hodge, from Battle, told the newspaper of the "inhuman" legal position faced by the family as they await a decision on whether anyone should be prosecuted.

She said her mother had left a letter expressing her "clear distress" that she could not discuss her plans with her daughters because of the risk of legal action.

She said: "My mother was protecting us. What a dreadful way to die: not the decision, but the fact that she could not talk to us. She could not say 'I am thinking about doing this, hold my hand'."

She added: "I would have wept buckets and I am not sure what I would have done, but I would much rather have had that opportunity."

A file will be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for lawyers to consider whether there is sufficient evidence for a criminal charge of aiding and abetting suicide, The Times said.

Ms Hodge said: "In a humane society it should be possible for someone in their right mind who, whether through age or illness, wants to die now rather than later, to be able to discuss this wish and to be helped to fulfil it rather than, like my brave mother, having to do it in isolation and without being sure if it is going to work."

A Sussex Police spokeswoman said a post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as a drug overdose.

"We are not treating this as a suspicious death and there are no suspects," she said. "A file will be passed to the CPS as a matter of course."

Ms Hodge's account of her mother's death comes after retired GP Dr Michael Irwin, of Cranleigh, Surrey, called on police to arrest him for his part in helping a terminally ill man travel to the Swiss clinic Dignitas to take his own life.

Dr Irwin said he wrote a cheque for £1,500 towards the cost of 58-year-old terminal cancer sufferer Raymond Cutkelvin's assisted suicide at the clinic in 2007.

The Law Lords are due to give a ruling tomorrow in a case brought by multiple sclerosis suffer Debbie Purdy, who wants to secure a definitive court ruling that her husband would not face prosecution if he helped her travel abroad to die in a country where assisted suicide is legal.

A poll for The Times at the weekend showed almost three-quarters of people want doctors to be allowed to help terminally ill patients to end their lives.

What do you think? Should the terminally ill be allowed to end their own lives? Or is all life sacred? Leave your comment below.