Elizabeth Stanfield Bell Wilson

Abstract

Family planning doctor and right to die campaigner. She was born in London, UK, on June 3, 1926, and died of pancreatic cancer in Glasgow, UK, on March 29, 2016, aged 89 years. Elizabeth (Libby) Wilson's career in medicine ranged from family planning to assisted dying—but there was a unifying factor throughout: the importance of free choice. As she herself put it in an interview recorded 3 years ago, “I've always been a very strong believer in autonomy”. Her work in family planning, she explained, as with other work she did in the field of abortion, had always been based on a belief in choice. Her subsequent interest in assisted dying was an extension of this conviction. “When I retired a friend of mine asked me if I'd like to go along to a meeting of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Scotland (VESS). I said yes. I didn't realise I'd be particularly interested, but I became extremely interested, and it wasn't long before I was on their committee…I'd been involved with choice at the beginning of life and it's absolutely logical that now I should be involved with choice at the end of life.” At both ends of this spectrum of existence Wilson's views often ran counter to mainstream opinion. Wilson trained at King's College Hospital Medical School in London, graduating in 1949 and becoming a general practitioner (GP). It was during the 1950s, and while working in Sheffield, that she developed an interest in family planning. She set up a clinic and made its services available to unmarried women: the first of a lifetime of actions that generated controversy. In 1967, her husband Graham, also a physician, was appointed to a chair at the University of Glasgow, and it was there that Libby made her next career move. She began working full-time for the Family Planning Association, and was soon experimenting with another novelty, a domiciliary family planning service. While visiting Hong Kong she encountered the injectable contraceptive depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (Depo-Provera). Impressed by what she saw, and after a review of the evidence of benefits versus harms, she began offering it to women in Glasgow. It proved popular. At one point there were possibly more women using it in Glasgow than in any other UK city. By the time of her retirement in 1990, Wilson had become the clinical co-coordinator of the Glasgow Family Planning Service. The free time opened up by retirement was soon filled by VESS. Wilson eventually left it to help found a local Glasgow organisation called Friends at the End (FATE) to which she acted as medical adviser. FATE promotes knowledge about end-of-life choices and dignified death, and campaigns for a change in the law on assisted suicide. Wilson worked with the late Margo McDonald, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, in McDonald's unsuccessful attempt to legalise assisted suicide. “She was very devoted to the whole idea of the right to die movement”, according to Michael Irwin, a retired GP and honorary medical adviser to FATE. “And she was a very independent character.” He suspects it was her deep attachment to independence, and people's right to exercise it, that powered her determined support for the right to die. But there was nothing sombre about her personality, says Irwin. “She was bubbly. A wonderful sense of humour.” In 2009, Wilson herself attracted national publicity after her arrest in connection with the death by suicide in her Surrey home of Caroline Loder, who had multiple sclerosis. Loder had already made an unsuccessful suicide attempt and had contacted Wilson seeking advice on how to be sure that any further attempt would have the desired outcome. After a lengthy period, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to proceed against Wilson—who said later that she had no regrets and would do the same again. The incident was a reminder that even within the right to die movement she was an outlier. “Most of us in the movement campaign to change the law”, says Irwin. “But Libby felt she had to go beyond that.” By which he means that she believed in the right of anyone to use any practicable and painless means available to effect their death. Irwin, who opposes such a tactic, says he often argued with her about it—but in a friendly way. “We didn't agree about it, but we didn't fall out. I respected her.” Wilson leaves four daughters and two sons.