Anyone who reads a Fairfax newspaper is unlikely to have missed a very prominent and popular feature article, The Big Sleep, originally published Friday 15 January 2016, in The Age, telling the story behind the double deaths of Peter and Pat Shaw last October in a suicide pact.

Journalist Julia Medew’s intimate and extensive investigation of the reasons why the 87 year old couple decided to take their own lives in an openly planned, ‘rational’ event, has attracted an avalanche of commentary, overwhelmingly supporting the couple's decision and action.

‘Dignified’, ‘logical’, ‘sensible’ are words which recur across the comments.  Likewise, ‘respect’ and ‘choice’.

As an observer of this topic over the last decade or so, it feels to me as though the tide is really on the turn on the issue of choice and control in death. 

 

Read more here.