A Casualty of Popular Culture’s Pro Assisted Suicide Campaign

We have discussed the suicide proselytizing in the media and popular culture here many times on SHS. But this story hits the nail! A woman with MS named Angela Harrison watched a television drama in which the protagonist went to Switzerland for suicide tourism—and then killed herself. From the story:

A multiple sclerosis sufferer killed herself after watching a BBC drama about euthanasia starring Julie Walters, an inquest heard. Angela Harrison, 44, took an overdose of drugs after watching one-off drama ‘A Short Stay in Switzerland’, screened on January 26. She was rushed to Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Cambridgeshire, and died two days later.

The inquest at Huntingdon law court on Thursday heard how Angela, from Eynesbury had battled depression for many years as a result of her MS. She had spoken frequently to her children about her desire to end her life before her condition became totally debilitating.

But her brother Frank Harrison said she had been planning a holiday on a cruise ship in the days before her overdose. He believed watching the harrowing euthanasia drama was the final straw. Mr Harrison said: ‘She had decided a long time ago that she would take her own life when the time came. ‘I think what brought it on that night was watching that Julie Walters play on television.’ The drama, written by Frank McGuinness, was inspired by the true story of Anne Turner, a retired English doctor who in 2006 decided to take her own life at Dignitas because she could no longer bear to live with supranuclear palsy, an incurable degenerative disease.

Promoting assisted suicide—and its romanticizing in the press and entertainment media—has deadly consequences. Will that lesson be learned? No. The argument will just be made—as it has often before—that she shouldn’t have had to do it alone.