Euthanasia activist who took on courts dies

A TERMINALLY ill campaigner who fought against the ban on assisted dying has died at the age of 71.

Noel Conway, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2014, wrote that he had made a ‘conscious and deliberate effort to end my own life’.

He died at his home in Shropshire after choosing to have his ventilator removed. Mr Conway, a paraplegic, lost his legal battle for ‘choice at the end of life’ in 2018 when the Supreme Court rejected his appeal against an earlier High Court ruling.

In a statement, released after his death by the campaign group Dignity in Dying, he wrote that his quality of life had ‘dipped into the negative’ over recent months. The retired lecturer added that he could no longer use his hands and was struggling with his speech.

‘I recognise that the time has come to take the decision now to do something about this,’ he said.

‘I am not leaving it until I’m completely bedridden and unable to communicate at all.’ Yesterday, his wife Carol Conway said he had died painlessly and peacefully, supported by his hospice team.

Sarah Wootton, of Dignity in Dying, paid tribute to him as ‘an inimitable and award-winning campaigner’.

Gordon Macdonald, of anti-euthanasia group Care Not Killing, noted Mr Conway had died ‘peacefully, painlessly, and without the need for a dramatic change in the law’.