Muristek
Australians have unequal rights to die. For some families, that only adds to the pain
Sue Walton vowed to be with her terminally ill daughter when she decided to end her life. But NSW laws against voluntary assisted dying kept them apart
Katie Leigh French was Sue Walton’s stepdaughter, but Walton never really made the distinction. One of six daughters in a blended family, French – like her stepmum – worked in aged care, and the pair “used to talk all the time, night shift, on the phone or she’d text me”. That was until July of last year when, just two weeks after giving birth to a baby boy, French was told that she had stage 4 cancer. She was given three months to live. She was 35 years old.
Soon after her diagnosis, French talked to her stepmum about her decision to apply to access voluntary assisted dying (VAD), with all the pragmatism of a couple of aged care workers. “She said, ‘I’m going to do it’, and it seemed like she was sort of waiting for approval. And I said: ‘Kate, it’s your body. It’s your choice’,” says Walton. “I know what’s going to happen at the end of all of this, and so do you. And you have the right to decide what to do.”
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