A grieving mother has ended her life at a clinic in Switzerland four years after the death of her only child.
Wendy Duffy, 56, a physically healthy woman, died at the Pegasos clinic in Basel after struggling to cope with the death of her 23-year-old son, Marcus.
The former care worker, from the West Midlands, England, had previously attempted to take her own life.
Photo: AFP
The case comes as assisted dying would not become law in England and Wales after proposed legislation, branded “hopelessly flawed” by opponents, ran out of time.
Ruedi Habegger, the founder of Pegasos, described Duffy’s death as a “sane suicide.” He told the Daily Mail: “I can confirm that Wendy Duffy, at her own request, was assisted to die on 24 April and that the procedure was completed without incident and in full compliance with her wishes.”
“I can also confirm that neither we nor any of the professional staff assessing her mental capacity had any doubt as to her intention, understanding and independence of both thought and action,” he said. “In historical terms, at English law, hers was a case of ‘sane suicide.’”
Duffy’s son died after choking on a sandwich that became lodged in his windpipe, starving his brain of oxygen.
She had told the Daily Mail that she had paid Pegasos ￡10,000 (US$13,533) and her siblings — including four sisters and two brothers — knew that she had applied to the clinic.
“I will call them when I get to Switzerland. It will be a hard call where I’ll say goodbye and thank them, but they will get it. They know,” she said. “My life, my choice. I wish this was available in the UK, then I wouldn’t have to go to Switzerland at all.”
Pegasos Swiss Association, a nonprofit organization, was founded by Habegger, a right-to-die activist, in 2019.
The terminally ill adults bill, which had been making its way through the British parliament for the past 18 months, fell on Friday.
While the bill had passed two votes in the British House of Commons, albeit with a narrower majority on the second occasion, it did not reach a vote in the Lords.
The bill had proposed 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.
More than 1,200 amendments to the bill had been suggested in the Lords, with more than 800 of those tabled or sponsored by seven peers.
In 2024, a 29-year-old Dutch woman was granted her request for assisted dying on the grounds of unbearable mental suffering.
Zoraya ter Beek received the final approval for assisted dying after a three-and-a-half-year process under a law passed in the Netherlands in 2002.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS