A grandmother from the UK who was not terminally ill, but was suffering from several medical conditions felt forced to starve herself to death after being denied assisted suicide.
"It is hell. I can't tell you how hard it is," Jean Davies, 86, told The Sunday Times four weeks into her fast. "You wouldn't decide this unless you thought your life was going to be so bad. It is intolerable."
She felt that starving herself was her only option because she wanted to die in her bed (so going somewhere where assisted suicide is legal was out of the question) and she did not want to die in a way where she would be breaking the law.
"What alternative do I have?" Davies told News.com.au.
Throughout her life, she campaigned for doctors to be allowed to administer lethal injections to people who wanted to die.
Davies' alternative to assisted suicide - starving herself - took much longer than she anticipated.
"She hadn't realised that it would take her so long to die after she stopped drinking. She thought it might take three days. It took a fortnight," Bronwen Davies, her 64-year-old daughter, told News.com.au.
Davies died on Oct. 1 in her bed.
Although her death didn't go exactly as planned, the right-to-die campaigner's death resparked the debate on assisted suicide in the UK.
The House of Lords are debating an assisted dying bill proposed by Lord Falconer to give terminally ill adults life-ending medication on Nov. 7.
