By Hilary White

LONDON, February 1, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Since Kay Gilderdale of Stonegate, East Sussex, was acquitted of murder charges in the death of her daughter, she has been transformed into the poster-girl of Britain's increasingly vocal and popular euthanasia movement. Kay Gilderale admitted to assisting the suicide of her 31-year-old daughter Lynn, who had suffered from Myalgic Encephalopathy for 17 years. Lynn's illness, also called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, had left her severely disabled, in pain and expressing her desire for suicide.

Kay Gilderale admitted to providing a lethal overdose of pain-killers that her daughter administered to herself through an IV drip. Gilderale, 55, said she had found her daughter injecting morphine and had brought more when asked. The not-guilty verdict took only two hours for the jury to deliver and was greeted in the gallery with applause and weeping.

The judge who acquitted Gilderale criticized the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for bringing the case to trial. High Court Judge, Mr. Justice Bean, criticized the prosecution for pursuing the charge of attempted murder and paid tribute to the jury’s “common sense, decency and humanity” in acquitting Gilderale.

Addressing prosecutor, Sally Howes QC, Justice Bean said, "Are you in a position to tell me why it was thought to be in the public interest to proceed with the prosecution of attempted murder rather than accepting the plea of assisted suicide?"

He referred to interim guidelines on assisted suicide, drawn up last November by the Director of Public Prosecutions that said those who assisted the suicide of loved ones would not be prosecuted if it could be shown that they had no motive of personal gain.

But there is growing speculation that the prosecutor's office brought a charge of murder in the case, expecting an acquittal, as part of an effort to overturn legal prohibitions on assisted suicide. MPs Ann Widdecombe, Jim Clark and Jim Dobbin have posted an Early Day Motion, demanding to know why the DPP brought a charge of attempted murder when it was clear that the case met the DPP's own guidelines that would prevent prosecution.  

Sarah Wootten from the group Dying in Dignity, the leading assisted suicide advocacy group in the U.K., has used the case to call for the outright legalization of assisted suicide. Wooten said, "As demonstrated here and in the case of Frances Inglis last week, the existing law doesn't work in practice and is not in line with public opinion. Ultimately, we need a full public consultation on whether the law should change, to regulate and legalize assisted dying for terminally ill people and to create a specific or partial defense of 'mercy killing' for these offences."

After her acquittal, Gilderale told the Daily Mail that she was unrepentant of having helped her daughter to kill herself. "I have never had a moment's regret," she said. Describing the day of her daughter's death, Gilderale said, "I never thought of snatching the syringe away because I knew that would have made her more determined, and I respected her as an adult with the right to choose."

Even the "conservative" newspapers have given Gilderale unabashedly sympathetic coverage. Gill Swain wrote in the Daily Mail last week, "Three decades after giving birth to her, Kay had just helped to release her beloved daughter from a life which had become intolerable. The process had taken an agonising 30 hours." BBC Panorama presenter Jeremy Vine wrote of his admiration for Gilderale in the Daily Telegraph, calling his meetings before and after her acquittal "emotional."

Now Gilderale has emerged as a spokesman for the movement to legalize assisted suicide, telling the BBC that she is in support of proposals to "clarify the law" because "there was confusion" about the situation with assisted suicide.

"If you've got a number of people who know the wishes of somebody and know they have suffered for a long time and see they are not going to recover - why could we not have a law of safeguards?

"Where a panel of people who know the patient can get together, speak to the patient and be sure that's what they want, what the patient wants - is that they cannot go on any further - and why could Lynn not have had a better death?" she said.

Now pundits, opinion-makers and politicians are leaping to Mrs. Gilderale's defense. The Guardian has issued the headline, "Kay Gilderdale: A devoted mother." The popular fantasy author, Sir Terry Pratchett, has supported Gilderale's suggestion that there be a government-sponsored panel set up to decide if a person who has expressed a wish to die is of sound mind.

But others have heavily criticized the acquittal and the fawning media coverage. John Smeaton, head of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said that the case highlights the problem of "bogus compassion" that has become the fall-back reaction of many in Britain.

"The Gilderdale case is an example of 'compassion' being used as a justification for killing, rather than the expression of care towards another," Smeaton said.

Quoting Belgian philosopher Michel Schooyans, Smeaton wrote, "To be compassionate has been thought to show understanding, to sympathize or to comfort. However, 'in cases of abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide which appear in the news, compassion is frequently invoked to justify the act'.

"As killing somebody is not self-evidently compassionate, in the same way that comforting them is, compassionate intentions have to be presented as the justification for killing," he added.

In November, some of Britain's most senior legal experts warned that the recent re-writing of the prosecution guidelines on assisted suicide were unworkable and would effectively render assisted suicide legal.

Under the guidelines, an individual who has helped another person to kill himself will not be prosecuted as long as prosecutors can discern no "motive of personal gain" in assisting in the suicide. Lord Carlile, the Government's chief terrorism adviser, former Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay and Baroness Butler-Sloss called the guidelines a "danger to public safety."

Lord Carlile said in the report, "It is a fundamental principle of the criminal law that its protection should be afforded equally to all irrespective of their state of health ... Taking a more lenient view of assistance with suicide in such cases is discriminatory."


Read related LSN coverage:

Britain Won't Prosecute Assisted Suicide: Chief Prosecutor
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09092109.html

UK Doctors who Allowed Suicidal Woman to Die Acted Lawfully: Coroner's Inquest
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/oct/09100606.html

Britain Already Has a "Government Policy of Silent Euthanasia": Anti-Euthanasia Activists
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09092501.html