Blur drummer slams ‘psychopathic’ laws after ex-wife was forced to end her own life alone

Dave Rowntree has criticised the UK laws surrounding assisted dying after his ex-wife was compelled to question to Dignitas unsocial earlier this year.

The Blur drummer called the laws ‘psychopathic’ aft Paola Marra, who helium wed successful 1994, made the determination to extremity her beingness successful Switzerland aft a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Marra flew to Zurich successful March aft respective rounds of attraction and surgeries for her bowel cancer, which was made worse by her allergy to painkillers.

Although the brace divorced successful 2000, Rowntree, 60, supported his ex-wife earlier her last journey, incapable to articulation her astatine the hazard of apprehension upon his re-entry to the UK.

‘It is the strategy washing its hands of hard problems successful a mode that I can’t stomach,’ the Parklife hitmaker told The Guardian.

There person been attempts successful caller years to legalise assisted dying successful the UK, with a Private Member’s Bill presently successful the House of Lords.

Rowntree continued: ‘That’s the full constituent of the state. The authorities tin state warfare … And if the authorities isn’t going to instrumentality these kinds of hard decisions, what the f**k is the constituent successful having the state?

‘This is psychopathic, wherever we are now, due to the fact that the full constituent of this [should be] to effort to marque things easier for the existent unfortunate successful this – the terminally sick person.’

Assisted dying is ineligible successful Switzerland but lone 1 organisation, Dignitas, is presently disposable to non-citizens, astatine a sizeable expense.

Initially, Rowntree tried to person Marra not to marque the travel and alternatively dice astatine location but her caput was made up.

Despite the UK laws, the Song 2 icon offered to question with her, frantically searching for flights erstwhile she had arrived successful Switzerland and called him stating she ‘didn’t cognize if she could bash it connected her own’.

However, soon aft Marra changed her mind, dying unsocial the pursuing greeting aft urging her ex-husband to enactment a alteration successful the law.

Rowntree, who ran arsenic a Labour campaigner in the past election, has abided by her dying privation and supported the calls for a instrumentality change.

Opposers of the highly divisive measure argue that this could let for disabled, elderly, and others astatine hazard to beryllium coerced into taking their ain lives.

The existent bill, enactment guardant by Kim Leadbeater, comes aft Baroness Meacher’s 2022 Bill stalled successful the House of Lords aft a 2nd reading.

Campaigners person been pushing for a instrumentality alteration for implicit a decennary when Lord Falconer’s archetypal Assisted Dying Bill was enactment forward, which was halted by the 2015 General Election.

Leadbeater argued her ‘choice astatine the extremity of life’ measure volition see ‘stringent’ criteria and a cooling-off period, with a six-month terminal diagnosis bounds proposed.

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