Woman who helped husband die at Dignitas has 'no regrets' as she speaks out (2025)

Louise Shackleton promised her husband Anthony, who died in December 2024, that she would tell his story.

A woman being investigated by police for assisting her husband's suicide at Dignitas has said she has "no regrets" following his death in December last year.

Louise Shackleton has spoken publicly for the first time since returning from the clinic in Switzerland. Her husband Anthony, 59, who had motor neurone disease, had said he wanted to die "without suffering".

As parliament prepares to vote again to legally introduce assisted dying in England and Wales, she has opened up about the experience. Remembering the journey, she said: “It took four people to get him on the plane and he turned and looked at me and said 'they can’t stop us now can they love?'"

She added: “We talked at length over two years about this and what he said to me on many occasions is ‘look at my options’,’ she said. ‘’Look at what my options are. I can either go there and I can die peacefully, with grace, without pain, without suffering or I could be laid in a bed not being able to move, not even being able to look at something unless you move my head. What he wanted, nothing more but a good death.

“He had a beautiful death, he fell asleep in my arms and as I laid with him it was surreal, I had to call an Uber. As I walked out of there, there was this panic and fear that I was leaving him…”

The couple had been together for 25 years, having met when they were 18, the Mirror reports. Anthony was diagnosed with the disease six years ago, and she explained all she wanted to do was help him.

She handed herself in to police after returning home from Switzerland. She said: "I have committed a crime, which I have admitted to, of assisting him by simply pushing him onto a plane and being with him, which I don't regret for one moment. He was my husband and I loved him."

Current UK legislation prohibits people from assisting in the suicide of others, but prosecutions are uncommon.

A North Yorkshire Police spokesman told Sky News in a statement: "The investigation is ongoing. There is nothing further to add at this stage."

The next vote on the assisted dying bill for England and Wales has been pushed back by three weeks to give MPs time to consider amendments after seeing an impact statement from the Government, which is expected after Easter.

The bill would allow someone with a terminal illness who has less than six months to live to legally end their life following approval by two doctors and a panel of experts.

Mrs Shackleton says she saw her husband put at ease "physically and mentally" after boarding their plane to Switzerland.

In 2024, 37 people from the UK ended their lives at Dignitas. In 2023, the number was 40 people.

She said: "We had the most wonderful four days. He was laughing. He was at total peace with his decision.

"And it was in those four days that I realised that he wanted the peaceful death more than he wanted to suffer and stay with me, which was hard, but that's how resolute he was in having this peace.

"I was his wife, we'd been together 25 years, we'd known each other since we were 18. I couldn't do anything else but help him."

She said the most difficult period for her was immediately following Anthony's death: "There was this panic and this fear that I was leaving him. That was a horrific experience.

"If the law had changed in this country, I would have been with family, family would have been with us, family would've been with him. But as it was, that couldn't happen."

To those who are fighting the new legislation, she says “we should respect other people’s decisions”.

She added: "I think that we need to safeguard people. I think that sometimes we need to suffer other people's choices, and when I mean suffer I mean we have to acknowledge that whilst we're not comfortable with those, that we need to respect other people, other people's wishes."

Anthony was a furniture restorer whose work was recognised around the world for his rocking horses.

Mrs Shackleton said: "I think the measure of the man is that nobody has ever said a bad word about him in the whole of his life because he was just so caring and giving."

She said she had promised her husband that she would tell his story after he had passed away.

"I felt that my husband's journey shouldn't be in vain. We discussed this on our last day and my husband made me promise to tell his story. He told me to fight and the simple thing that I'm fighting for is people to have the choice.

"This is about a dying person's choice to either follow their journey through with disease or to die peacefully when they want to, on their terms, and have a good death. It's that simple."

Kim Leadbeater, the MP responsible for introducing the bill, has written to all 650 MPs saying the next debate is due to take place on May 16.

She recently said 150 amendments have been added to the bill, which seeks to allow terminally ill people to end their lives "on their own terms".

One of these changes has seen the requirement for a High Court judge to be involved removed and instead replaced with a voluntary assisted dying commissioner.

It will comprise of a judge or former judge to take charge of the cases, along with expert panels consisting of a senior legal figure, a psychiatrist and a social worker.

In late March 2025, Ms Leadbetter changed the rollout of assisted dying if passed to at least 2029 as she said it was "more important to do this properly than to do it quickly".

The MP told the Mirror: "I believe the amendments made have significantly strengthened what was already the most robust assisted dying legislation in the world. The next debate in the Commons for Report Stage will now take place on Friday, May 16th. I have always said it is more important to do this properly than to do it quickly. I am absolutely confident that there will be no delay to the bill’s passage towards Royal Assent should both Houses give it their support."

Sarah Wootton, Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying, said: “Louise and Anthony’s experience is proof that the blanket ban on assisted dying is failing dying people and their loved ones.

"That British membership of Dignitas has risen more than 50% in the last five years shows there is a demand for choice that is only increasing. For those who cannot afford the £15,000 this costs, some are left to suffer as they die, despite good care, or to take matters into their own hands. It is unacceptable that these are the choices dying people face in this country.

“Thankfully, MPs are recognising that the status quo is untenable, and we are closer than ever before to giving the choice that two thirds of us are calling out for. The Isle of Man is the first in the British Isles to change the law and Westminster and Holyrood will soon be voting on legislation.

"When MPs and MSPs come to cast their votes in the coming weeks, they must remember people like Louise and Anthony and the thousands of others who have been let down by the blanket ban, who are depending on them to change this law.”

Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of 'Care Not Killing', an organisation against assisted suicide, told Sky News: “These are very sad cases and there are lots of people who every day face death and/or face the death of relatives in hospices and hospitals around the UK.

“And so we do need to look at how we help people have peaceful and dignified deaths but the way to do that is by properly funding palliative care in this country at the moment. At the moment a third of palliative care funding comes from the NHS. A quarter of the people with cancer don’t get the palliative care they need.

He said assisted dying would only encourage “abuses and coercion and people who are depressed and people who feel they are a burden on others to end their life inappropriately.”