British woman, Baroness Campbell, has written an extraordinarily moving testimony opposing moves to legalise assisted suicide in the UK. She describes her own experience as a person with disabilities when listening to doctors discuss whether her life was worth living.

“Believe me, it is a terrifying experience to lie in a hospital bed and hear your doctors - the very people you should trust most - calmly decide that your life isn't worth living. And the anguish of the moment becomes even worse when, in your distress and anxiety, you feel under pressure to agree,” she wrote.

“I know. It happened to me in 2002 when I was struck down by a sudden chest infection and rushed to an unfamiliar hospital where nobody knew me or anything about me. But then, the consultants thought they knew enough. They could see that I was seriously disabled. I was born with spinal muscular atrophy and spend my waking hours in a wheelchair. I can't breathe or eat or use the bathroom without assistance.

“In their eyes, I was an obviously hopeless case. Though proper treatment would give me a fighting chance of survival, they couldn't see past my disability.

“'You wouldn't want to be resuscitated,' they said, causing me to even doubt myself. Why were they saying this? What did they know that I didn't? It could have been a death sentence, one that I was too ill to resist.

“In the event, it was my husband who came to the rescue. He dug out a photograph of me receiving an honorary university degree. It was enough to persuade the medical powers-that-be that my life had some purpose and meaning after all. But even though I am still here seven years later to tell the tale, the wider battle rages more fiercely than ever.

Now the Baroness has spoken out against what she describes as “powerful voices argue with increasing vigour that our society pays far too much heed to the sanctity of human life.”

“We are told that we have a right to die whenever we choose, that it is cruel to prolong the existence of the terminally ill and that our laws against suicide are badly out of kilter with public opinion,” she wrote.

Her testimony comes at a time when the British House of Lords threw out a proposal to lift the threat of prosecution from any person helping a terminally ill patient who travels to a country where euthanasia is legal.

“But make no mistake: the issue hasn't gone away,” she warned.

“'Reform' wouldn't just apply to the terminally ill, no matter what the campaigners may say. It would affect disabled people too, not to mention the elderly,” she wrote, pointing out that not a single organisation representing disabled people, terminally ill patients or those who are old supports euthanasia-legislation. They understand its likely consequences.

Read more here at the Daily Mail