She Nearly Ended Her Life. Instead, She Changed A National Debate.

After Scottish nurse Michelle Anna Moffatt suffered a devastating spinal accident in 2019, she decided she wanted to die.

She had merely bent over to pick up a pen on an average weekday in a busy hospital unit. That simple act triggered two prolapsed discs, which pressed on her nerves and spinal cord, and after complications in surgery, she was left unable to walk ever again. Forced to give up the career she loved and convinced she had become a burden to her husband and four children, she secretly joined the physician-assisted suicide nonprofit Dignitas and began saving for a one-way trip to Switzerland. Fortunately, her family found out and stopped her.

Had assisted suicide been legal in Britain at the time, she later admitted to me, she would almost certainly have taken it. Instead, she lived.

This summer, six years after that life-changing moment, Michelle died naturally after years of declining health. But the six years she almost cut short became one of the most powerful arguments against assisted suicide ever seen.

Nearly 30 years after Oregon became the first American state to legalize physician-assisted suicide, the movement has spread rapidly. More than a dozen states from California to New York now permit doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients, while campaign groups are lobbying for many more to follow. As many as 16 states are considering legalizing the procedure this year.

Canada offers perhaps the clearest picture of where that trajectory can lead. What began as a supposedly exceptional measure has become responsible for thousands of deaths annually, with the debate no longer focused on whether assisted suicide should exist, but who else should qualify. A major 2024 report found that patients were turning to the option as a last resort if they were poor or homeless.

Resistance is mounting. As New York prepares to implement its new death law on August 5, Catholic healthcare providers have gone to court to halt it at the 11th hour — because despite their clear convictions against aiding suicide, they would be compelled to participate. Under New York statute, medical professionals would be compelled to raise the option of assisted suicide with terminally ill patients whether or not the patient asks. The penalty for non-compliance could be up to a year in prison.

Among the plaintiffs are the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who have spent 125 years caring for more than 45,000 dying patients free of charge. They believe true compassion means caring for and supporting a patient in his natural death, not deliberately cutting his life short. Compelling them to invite patients to consider suicide is a violation of their free speech. The suit further argues that New York’s law conflicts with federal statutes prohibiting the use of federal healthcare funds for “assisted dying,” a claim that applies to several plaintiffs who receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. At large, the case exposes the ripple of harms that assisted suicide legislation can cause, affecting not only the patients, but the medical staff around them.

Britain now finds itself at the same crossroads. After Labour Party member of parliament Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill failed only months ago amid widespread concerns over inadequate safeguards, supporters have already returned it to parliament under Lauren Edwards, also of the Labour Party, determined to push it through a vote and into law later this year.

Michelle once would have welcomed it. When I first spoke to her about her life, over two years ago, she spoke candidly about the hopelessness that followed her accident. She wasn’t just seeking death because her pain was uncontrollable, but because, she told me, she “genuinely believed” her family would be better off without her.

But when her secret plans were discovered, her family was shocked. Rather than agreeing she was a burden, they fought for her. She received psychological support from her doctor against suicidal ideation. Gradually, she rediscovered something she thought she’d lost forever: purpose.

Her physical condition never improved. In fact, Michelle soon became subject to a plethora of new autoimmune conditions. She suffered chronic pain and repeated hospitalizations. In her final year, her digestive system became paralyzed, meaning she could no longer eat and instead was forced to depend on a feeding tube as she went about her daily life. 

Yet she no longer wanted to die.

Instead, she became one of Britain’s most compelling campaigners for disabled people, speaking before politicians, encouraging others living with disability, and helping shape one of the country’s biggest ethical debates.

Her daughter Darrah, now 16, believes those six years transformed their family.

“I’m so grateful that with the right support from the doctors, and charities like Spinal Injuries Scotland, my mum made the decision to not go through with assisted suicide,” she told me. “My mum was in a really dark place and couldn’t see the point in living, but we never stopped showing her how much we loved her and how much we needed her in our lives.”

“Assisted suicide would have taken away the other six years of my mum’s life,” she added. “I’m so glad that it wasn’t available while she was at her lowest point.”

Those words expose the uncomfortable reality at the heart of the assisted-suicide debate. Supporters often present it as a question of autonomy, but suicide never affects only one person. Michelle’s children would have lost six precious years with their mother. Her parents would have buried their daughter years before her natural death. And Britain would have lost one of its strongest voices defending vulnerable patients.

Her story also reflects what official data have shown for years. In Oregon, the leading reasons patients request assisted suicide rarely include uncontrolled pain. Instead, they cite losing independence, losing dignity, being unable to enjoy life, and feeling like a burden. Those were exactly the thoughts that drove Michelle toward Dignitas.

Her father, David Clark, recalls how close the family came to losing her.

“When I found out she’d made an appointment at Dignitas, I couldn’t believe how completely she’d misread her own worth,” he told me. “When someone stands on a bridge contemplating suicide, we don’t ask how long they’ve got left to live. We try to save them. Why should sick or disabled people be treated differently?”

Most jurisdictions with assisted dying laws follow the Oregon model, requiring patients to have a terminal prognosis of six months or less. Yet even this safeguard is seriously flawed. A study reported in the Telegraph in 2024 found that doctors are wrong about how long terminally ill patients will live in half of cases. Out of 25,000 cases, more than 50% of the patients defied expectations and outlived their prognoses.

When Michelle sought death in Switzerland, she didn’t have a terminal diagnosis. But toward the end of her life, it wouldn’t have been hard for her to qualify under most assisted suicide jurisdictions (including in the U.S.) by simply removing her feeding tube. Making oneself “terminally ill” can be disturbingly easy. A diabetic refusing insulin, or an anorexic refusing to eat, for example, can become “terminal” and granted a suicide-by-state. A study published in the British Medical Journal last year found that at least 60 patients with eating disorders had been assisted in death across Belgium, the Netherlands, and the U.S. A third were in their teens or twenties, and all were female.

For Michelle, in her final six years, even as her body gave up on her, she never gave up on life. There was a clear reason that gave her hope. She stopped seeing her life as dependent on her own comfort and health, and, having renewed a childhood faith in God, started living each day with a purpose: to glorify him and make him known wherever she went. It was a strategy that seemed to work. I have never met a more joyful person in all my life.

One of the last times I saw Michelle, we sat together in the Scottish Parliament waiting for the final vote on an assisted suicide bill in her own country. Michelle’s story had been referenced in the debate. When the bill was defeated, she gasped in shock. She had participated in a movement that changed the course of the country. Because she refused to die, other vulnerable patients in her shoes would now have the chance to live. 

As states across the U.S. consider if an assisted suicide law would be a “kindness” to patients without hope, they should consider Michelle’s story. Hope can stretch beyond circumstances; value beyond a wheelchair. Society must care for its most vulnerable members. That means investment in much-needed palliative care advancement, support for disabled people to participate in community life, and, most importantly, an outlook that values every life beyond physical ability.

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Lois McLatchie Miller (@loismclatch) is a writer and social commentator from Great Britain, focusing on the state of free speech, faith, and family across the globe.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.