Dame Esther Rantzen’s family have released a final message from the broadcaster and Childline founder in which she said the law left her without a choice over how she died, renewing attention on the unresolved debate over assisted dying.

Rantzen, who died aged 86 after being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, did not say she would necessarily have used assisted dying if it had been legal. Instead, she argued that having the option would have changed the final phase of her illness. “It would have transformed the way I died if the law had allowed me to ask for assistance to die when my life had become unbearable,” she wrote.¹

The account published by the left-wing source emphasises her experience of hospice care alongside her frustration with the law. Rantzen praised the support of Oakhaven Hospice but said she was still “deprived of any choice over my own death by the current messy criminal law.”¹ Her argument was not that anyone should be compelled to choose assisted dying, but that terminally ill people should be able to seek it.

The right-wing account similarly centres her concern about suffering and the impact on relatives. It reports that she hoped a legal option could have offered “a swift, pain-free death” and spared her family the distress of witnessing a difficult final period.² It also notes that she became too frail to travel to Dignitas in Switzerland.²

Both accounts portray Rantzen’s note as a direct appeal to supporters of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which did not become law. Addressing those who opposed the measure, she said they had a right to their own choice, “but not the right to impose your choice” on others.¹

Her closing message distilled the case she wanted campaigners to carry forward: “Nobody wants to shorten life, just to shorten death.”²