Assisted dying campaigners inform House of Lords to ‘cling heads in disgrace’ in largest ever present of assist

The largest ever public demonstration in support of the assisted dying bill outside Parliament as Lords told to ‘hang their heads in shame’ as a minority have raised more than 1,200 amendments

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Assisted dying campaigners sent a powerful message to the House of Lords as they gathered for the UK’s largest ever public demonstration in support of assisted dying.

The show of strength is being held in support of the historic bill which has been stalled in the House of Lords. Widow Louise Shackleton, who went to Dignitas with her husband Antony, 59, in 2024, said the peers “should hang their heads in shame.”

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was passed by the House of Commons on June 20 2025. But since it has been in the Lords it has been blocked from progressing by a small minority who raised more than 1,200 amendments, including the need for a pregnancy test for both men and women.

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Dying in Dignity said despite polls showing support of nearly 8 in 10 of the public, a small number of opposed Peers in the House of Lords have ‘filibustered’ – deliberately running the Bill out of time to pass this parliamentary session. The Bill would give those terminally ill, mentally competent adults, with six months to live, the choice of an assisted death.

Mum of three Louise, 59, said in an interview with The Mirror: “How dare these ten disgraced peers look society in the face and say they care about dying people, they should hang their heads in shame. How dare they put their belief systems above the care and compassion that should be shown to people who have been promised an agonising death by their diseases.

“They have cost our country not only humanity but also millions of pounds in the games they are playing. The Lords have played these games before, they played it with the Hunting Act. Just recently in 2022, the parliament act had to be brought in because the Lords refused to make it illegal to bring back hunting trophies from countries like Africa.”

Louise from North Yorkshire is travelling down on Friday to be outside the House of Lords on the final day of the bill but says each trip has been a “struggle”. She explained: “I feel physically sick at the thought of going to face them. Knowing that some of them had a sweepstake on who could submit the most amendments.

“This shows the gutter level these people will stoop, to have their own way due to their religious beliefs. I have sat in the House of Lords on many occasions and I have witnessed them say, ‘Nobody should decide how somebody dies except for God’. But what gives them the right to force their beliefs on 87 per cent of the British public?”

The protest outside Parliament Square includes four terminally ill women standing on plinths in Parliament Square. It is being held ahead of the final day of debate. The women are planning their “monument to dignity and choice” as supporters call on MPs to bring back the assisted dying Bill in the next Parliament.

Dying in Dignity said an empty plinth is to mark those, such as music teacher and campaigner Nathaniel Dye who died of terminal bowel cancer earlier this year. Sophie Blake, Elise Burns, Pamela Fisher, and Christie Arntsen, are standing strong to send a message to the Lords despite each living with a terminal diagnosis.

Sophie Blake, 53, was diagnosed with stage four secondary breast cancer in May 2022. Her cancer is dormant currently but could return any time. Then she knows that she could be forced to suffer at the end, especially since she is allergic to opioids, which many palliative care drugs contain.

Sophie, 52, a Sky Sports and BBC TV presenter, from Brighton does not want her 16-year-old daughter Maya to remember her for the suffering at the end. She said: “I’ve seen people suffer and I’ve heard from their relatives how they’ve suffered and it’s cruel and it’s not necessary because people don’t need to die in such a horrendous undignified way.”

Elise Burns, 52, has secondary cancer of the lungs, liver and bones which has been ‘eating away’ at her body leaving her in constant pain. She wants the law to change to prevent thousands more dying people being forced to suffer, including herself.

Elise has already beaten her two year prognosis and is desperate to save thousands like her from a drawn out and horrific death. Christie Arntsen, 58, has lived with incurable metastatic breast cancer for more than a decade and it has just returned for the fifth time.

She says her only treatment now available to her is chemotherapy and feels ‘robbed’ by peers and is “absolutely mortified”. She said: “If I had known that assisted dying was an option, a weight would have been lifted from my mind for the last 10 years.

“I believe that I am the perfect example of how stringent the rules for assisted dying would be under the proposed law. Two doctors and a Judge would have to agree that a person has a terminal diagnosis (a life expectancy of 6 months or less) and that the person has the mental capacity to choose to take life ending medication. Following these rules, at no time in the last 10 years would I have been able to choose to have an assisted death because at no point was I given a prognosis of less than 6 months.”

She says currently her only option is Dignistas which means she would have to die earlier to make sure she was well enough to travel. The mum of two, who lives near Whitney, said some peers have ‘ blinders on’.

Pamela Fisher, 64, from Huddersfield, has terminal breast cancer that has spread to her bones and is now a wheelchair user. As a Church of England lay preacher, Pamela believes that Christian compassion is entirely compatible with choice at the end of life.

The fear of dying in pain and discomfort has been keeping her awake at night.The 64-year-old said: “I don’t want to die, not now. I love life and I want to live.

“But that said, I live in terror at the prospect of how my final weeks of life could turn out. I know that even with the best palliative care available, there are limits to what can be done. It’s a dead weight of fear I carry around with me.”

Kim Leadbeater MP, the Bill’s sponsor, and Sarah Wootton, Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying, are expected to address the demonstration. Ms Leadbeater, the MP who is the bill’s sponsor, and those with personal experience of the harms of the blanket ban are to hand in local petitions to No. 10 Downing Street at 2pm.