A wife under police investigation after assisting the suicide of her husband at Dignitas in Switzerland said she has “no regrets” as he had a “beautiful death”. Louise Shackleton, whose husband Anthony was suffering from Motor Neurone Disease said: “It took four people to get him on the plane and he turned and looked at me and said ‘they can’t stop us now can they love?”
Louise, from North Yorkshire, has spoken publicly for the first time since her husband’s death in December, as parliament prepares to vote again on legislation to introduce assisted dying in England and Wales. “We talked at length over two years about this and what he said to me on many occasions is ‘look at my options’,’ she said. ‘’Look at what my options are. I can either go there and I can die peacefully, with grace, without pain, without suffering or I could be laid in a bed not being able to move, not even being able to look at something unless you move my head. What he wanted, nothing more but a good death.
“He had a beautiful death, he fell asleep in my arms and as I laid with him it was surreal, I had to call an Uber. As I walked out of there, there was this panic and fear that I was leaving him…”
Mrs Shackleton said they had been together for 25 years and had known each other since they were 18. “I couldn’t do anything else but help him.”
She surrendered herself to police after returning from Switzerland having seen her husband Anthony die five months ago. He had been suffering from motor neurone disease for six years.
“I have committed a crime, which I have admitted to, of assisting him by simply pushing him onto a plane and being with him, which I don’t regret for one moment. He was my husband and I loved him,” she said.
The law in the UK prohibits people from assisting in the suicide of others, but prosecutions have been rare.
In a statement, a North Yorkshire Police spokesman told Sky News: “The investigation is ongoing. There is nothing further to add at this stage.”
The next vote on the assisted dying bill for England and Wales has been delayed by three weeks to give MPs time to consider amendments after seeing the Government’s impact statement.
The legislation would permit a person who is terminally ill with less than six months to live to legally end their life after approval by two doctors and an expert panel.
Mrs Shackleton says she saw her husband “physically and mentally” relax once on the flight to Switzerland.
In 2024, 37 people from the UK ended their lives at Dignitas. In 2023, 40 people from the UK ended their lives at the clinic in Switzerland.
Mrs Shackleton said: “We had the most wonderful four days. He was laughing. He was at total peace with his decision.
“And it was in those four days that I realised that he wanted the peaceful death more than he wanted to suffer and stay with me, which was hard, but that’s how resolute he was in having this peace.
“I was his wife, we’d been together 25 years, we’d known each other since we were 18. I couldn’t do anything else but help him.”
She said the hardest part of the journey came after her husband’s death.
“There was this panic and this fear that I was leaving him,” she said. “That was a horrific experience.
“If the law had changed in this country, I would have been with family, family would have been with us, family would’ve been with him. But as it was, that couldn’t happen.”
To those who are fighting the assisted dying bill she says “we should respect other people’s decisions”.
“I think that we need to safeguard people,” Mrs Shackleton accepted. “I think that sometimes we need to suffer other people’s choices, and when I mean suffer I mean we have to acknowledge that whilst we’re not comfortable with those, that we need to respect other people, other people’s wishes.”
Anthony, who died aged 59, was a furniture restorer who had earned worldwide recognition for making rocking horses.
“I think the measure of the man is that nobody has ever said a bad word about him in the whole of his life because he was just so caring and giving,” his widow said.
She said she had chosen to speak publicly because of a promise she had made him.
“I felt that my husband’s journey shouldn’t be in vain. We discussed this on our last day and my husband made me promise to tell his story.
“He told me to fight and the simple thing that I’m fighting for is people to have the choice.
“This is about a dying person’s choice to either follow their journey through with disease or to die peacefully when they want to, on their terms, and have a good death. It’s that simple.”
The next debate on the assisted dying bill has been postponed to allow MPs more time to consider their positions following controversy over amendments and wait for the Government’s impact statement expected after Easter.
Kim Leadbeater, the MP who introduced the bill, has sent letters to all 650 MPs saying the next debate will now take place on May 16th.
Ms Leadbeater recently said 150 amendments have been adopted to the bill, which aims to allow terminally ill people to end their lives “on their own terms”.
One of the amendments has seen the need for a High Court Judge’s involvement to be scrapped and instead replaced with a voluntary assisted dying commissioner.
It will comprise of a judge or former judge to oversee assisted dying cases, along with expert panels featuring a senior legal figure, a psychiatrist and a social worker.
In late March, the MP moved the rollout of assisted dying if passed to at least 2029 as she said it was “more important to do this properly than to do it quickly”.
The MP told the Mirror: “I believe the amendments made have significantly strengthened what was already the most robust assisted dying legislation in the world. The next debate in the Commons for Report Stage will now take place on Friday, May 16th. I have always said it is more important to do this properly than to do it quickly. I am absolutely confident that there will be no delay to the bill’s passage towards Royal Assent should both Houses give it their support.”
Sarah Wootton, Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying, said: “Louise and Anthony’s experience is proof that the blanket ban on assisted dying is failing dying people and their loved ones.
“That British membership of Dignitas has risen more than 50% in the last five years shows there is a demand for choice that is only increasing. For those who cannot afford the £15,000 this costs, some are left to suffer as they die, despite good care, or to take matters into their own hands. It is unacceptable that these are the choices dying people face in this country.
“Thankfully, MPs are recognising that the status quo is untenable, and we are closer than ever before to giving the choice that two thirds of us are calling out for. The Isle of Man is the first in the British Isles to change the law and Westminster and Holyrood will soon be voting on legislation.
“When MPs and MSPs come to cast their votes in the coming weeks, they must remember people like Louise and Anthony and the thousands of others who have been let down by the blanket ban, who are depending on them to change this law.”
Chief executive of ‘Care Not Killing’, Dr Gordon Macdonald, an alliance that opposes to assisted suicide, told Sky News today: “These are very sad cases and there are lots of people who every day face death and/or face the death of relatives in hospices and hospitals around the UK.
“And so we do need to look at how we help people have peaceful and dignified deaths but the way to do that is by properly funding palliative care in this country at the moment. At the moment a third of palliative care funding comes from the NHS. A quarter of the people with cancer don’t get the palliative care they need.
He said assisted suicide would just encourage “abuses and coercion and people who are depressed and people who feel they are a burden on others to end their life inappropriately.”
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.