Obituary in Bournemouth Daily Echo

Alison Davis

This is the obituary published by the Daily Echo on Friday 12 December 2013:

PRO-life campaigner and charity founder Alison Davis died at home in Milborne St Andrew on Tuesday, December 3, aged 58.

Paralysed from the waist down with spina bifida, which confined her to a wheelchair from the age of 14, her life was defined by a determination to overcome the limits imposed by her condition.

Born in Bolton on January 8, 1955, Mrs Davis grew up in Stevenage before attending the University of Essex in Colchester, where she studied sociology.

At the time she was pro-abortion, but news reports of doctors starving disabled newborns and terminating unborn children gradually changed her views.

Remaining at the university after her degree, where she worked as a secretary, she joined the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) and later joined their Handicap Division (No Less Human), becoming a high-profile defender of the pro-life rights of disabled people.

It was in Colchester that she met her husband of ten years, whom she married in 1975, but they separated in 1985 at the beginning of a very difficult period in her life.

Mrs Davis, who suffered from several painful and disabling conditions, including osteoporosis, arthritis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, experienced ten difficult years after her separation, in which she made several suicide attempts.

Gradually over the early 1990s she found the strength to overcome her difficulties and personal sorrows, with the help of her friends and carers, and a new-found faith.

Although raised a Christian she was an atheist for many years, and she explored other religions during this time. However, after reading the Bible she came to view Catholicism as her faith.

In 1987 she met Colin Harte, who was working for the SPUC, and he became her carer and devoted companion. The same year she moved to Milborne St Andrew, near Bere Regis, where she lived for the rest of her life.

The great transformation in her life came in 1995, when she and Mr Harte visited a disabled children’s centre in southern India, and she was greatly moved by the plight of the young people she met.

A simple fundraising appeal they set up grew in time into a full-blown charity, Enable, supporting disabled youngsters at two children’s centres.

She said the children had given her a love of life, and this was the reason she campaigned against voluntary euthanasia, which she described as the “hallmark of a society that has given up on its most vulnerable members”.

She argued that had she been given the option to take her own life between 1985 and 1995 she would have taken it, and would never have had the chance to turn her life around.

During the 1990s Mrs Davis befriended an American death row inmate, Sammy Felder, who had been convicted of killing a disabled man in his care.

A life-long opponent of the death penalty, she was moved by his plight despite his crime, and witnessed his execution in December 1999, the last to take place in the US before the new millennium.

She was awarded a Clarins Woman of the Year award, Britain’s Most Inspiring Woman from Marie Claire magazine and a Catholic Woman of the Year award.

Mrs Davis came to believe there was value in suffering, but never complained of her difficulties to others, and she was always very modest about her achievements.

She loved music, nature and the countryside around her home, and was happiest when among her friends.

A Requiem Mass will be held today at 12pm at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in High West Street,
Dorchester. She will then be buried in the cemetery at St Andrew’s Church, Milborne St Andrew.

Daily Telegraph Obituary

I will post some obituaries and other notices about Ali that appeared after she died, before going on to post other items.

The obituary in the Daily Telegraph was published in the paper on 12 December, and appeared online the previous day.

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Alison Davis - obituary

Alison Davis campaigned against legalising assisted suicide despite her own suffering

Alison Davis

Alison Davis , who has died aged 58, was a severely disabled woman who became a prominent campaigner against the legalisation of assisted suicide, a campaign which was all the more potent because for many years she had wanted to end her own life.

Alison Davis was born on January 8 1955 with spina bifida and hydrocephalus and later developed emphysema, osteoporosis and arthritis. By her thirties her spine was collapsing, trapping nerves and causing excruciating pain. Confined to a wheelchair from the age of 14, she needed full-time care.

As a young adult, Alison Davis tried to live as normal a life as possible. She read Sociology at university and married in 1975. But in 1985 her marriage failed and, unable to cope, she tried to kill herself on several occasions.

Friends found her in time, however, and she survived. “I had a settled wish to die that lasted over 10 years,” she wrote later, “and at that time doctors thought (wrongly as it turns out) that I had only a very short time to live.” If “voluntary” euthanasia had been a legal choice at the time, she said, she would have requested it.

A combination of factors had helped her to see that she had a worthwhile future, including her growing involvement in charity work, though another key factor was her gradual conversion to Roman Catholicism.

As a young woman she had stopped believing in God and had supported a woman’s “right to choose”; but her attitude changed after she read newspaper reports of the case of a baby girl who had been born in hospital with the same disabilities as hers, but who had been sedated and, in the terminology of the time, allowed to succumb to the inevitable “with dignity”. Shocked to think that she, too, might have suffered the same fate, in 1981 she wrote a letter to the Guardian attacking the “killing” of newborn disabled babies.

As a result she was contacted by the pro-life Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) which sought to convince her that killing a newborn disabled child was merely an extension of the legalised practice of aborting the unborn. From 1983 Alison Davis began working for SPUC’s new Handicap Division (later renamed No Less Human), and after two pilgrimages to Lourdes she was received into the Catholic Church in 1991.

In the years that followed she became a leading spokeswoman not only in opposition to attempts to introduce legislation allowing assisted suicide, but on such matters as abortion, genetic screening and embryonic stem cell research, which she acknowledged might potentially help people with conditions like hers, but opposed on the basis of the belief that life begins at the moment of conception.

In 1987 Alison Davis had met Colin Harte, who was working for SPUC and later wrote Changing Unjust Laws Justly; Pro-Life Solidarity with the Last and the Least (2005). He became her carer and companion, and in 1995, with his help, she set up Enable, a charity for disabled children in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It gave her a renewed purpose in life and on her birthday in 2001 the charity opened its first new home, named after her.

“Every time I go to India I think 'I don’t know if I can do this any more.’ Then I see all my children, lined up waiting to see me, and I know that it’s all worthwhile,” she explained. “They all call me 'mummy’.”

In 2002 Alison Davis won the Clarins Woman of the Year title for her charity work, and the following year was named Britain’s most inspirational woman in a competition organised by the Body Shop and Marie Claire magazine.

Alison Davis, born January 8 1955, died December 3 2013

Obituary

Francis Phillips has written a very fitting obituary for Alison in the Catholic Herald for which much gratitude is due.

Obituary: Alison Davis

Alison Davis, who for 30 years was the representative of the SPUC disability group, No Less Human, was born on January 8, 1955. She died on December 3, 2013

By Francis Phillips on Tuesday, 3 December 2013

Alison Davis

Alison Davis was born with spina bifida. She later developed conditions including osteoporosis, arthritis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Coping with these permanently disabling and painful conditions dominated but did not define her life. Indeed, they led her to champion the rights of the vulnerable, the disabled and the unborn, first as an atheist and then as a Catholic.

Her early adult life was marked by a determination to live as normal a life as possible, despite having to use a wheelchair. She studied sociology at university, where she stopped believing in God. Writing about this period of her life in a paper she delivered to a New Zealand Family Life International Conference in 2009 she was honest: “It was largely because I wanted to live a lifestyle I knew was incompatible with the Christian faith.” She married young, in 1975, but after ten years in which she “tried very hard to find happiness without God”, the marriage failed.

At university Alison had strongly supported a woman’s right to choose abortion but her attitude changed after she read of the case of a baby girl, Louise, born in 1979 with the same disabilities as hers, who had been deliberately starved and dehydrated to death by Dr Donald Garrow of the High Wycombe Hospital. The case, which received wide publicity at the time, shocked her to the core.

In 1981 the Guardian published a letter in which she criticised the killing of newborn disabled babies. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) contacted her and argued that killing the newborn disabled was a consequence of killing the unborn. Alison was reluctant to give weight to SPUC’s arguments but within a couple of years she accepted them and became pro-life. From 1983 Alison worked full-time for SPUC’s newly developed Handicap Division (its name was later changed to No Less Human), for disabled people as well as their families and carers, and became a major commentator on anti-life policies which discriminated against disabled people.

John Smeaton, chief executive of SPUC, writes that “In spite of serious illness [Alison] continued to write, publish and broadcast on the eugenic nature of the Abortion Act and on healthcare and government policies, including major interviews on BBC’s Newsnight, the World Service’s Heart and Soul: Choosing Life series and leading letters in the national newspapers.”

In 1985 her marriage ended and in the following years a number of serious personal difficulties resulted in her making several suicide attempts. Yet paradoxically, she also started to search for religious belief. Having studied other world faiths, she turned to the Bible. “I began to think it could just be true,” she wrote. In 1986 she went to Scotland to stay with the prominent pro-life priest, Fr James Morrow of Humanae Vitae House in Braemar. He taught her to say the Rosary and she attended Mass in his chapel.

Yet the road to the Church was not easy and Alison still struggled to find meaning in life. Joining a pilgrimage to Lourdes she began to understand that she and the other sick people there were very much loved by God in their suffering. In 1987 she met Colin Harte who was working for SPUC. From 1989 he was her devoted companion and carer for the rest of her life; indeed, it was Alison’s conviction that pro-lifers should not compromise and exclude disabled babies in attempts to lower the abortion upper limit (as happened with David Alton’s 1987-88 Bill) that led Harte to question the whole basis of incremental legislation and to write his own book on the subject, Changing Unjust Laws Justly; Pro-Life Solidarity with the Last and the Least (2005).

During a second pilgrimage to Lourdes Alison learned for the first time that suffering need not be wasted; it can be offered up to God on behalf of others. She became increasingly drawn to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Finally, on Easter Sunday, 31 March 1991, she was received into the Church.

Although Alison knew she had “come home”, being a Catholic brought its own difficulties. She discovered some churches couldn’t accommodate wheelchair users and she sometimes experienced an acute sense of rejection. She learnt that her Faith would not remove the sorrows of life but that it does provide the grace and strength necessary to live with them. A visit to Calcutta over Christmas in 1991, and witnessing the love a pavement-dwelling family had for their tiny baby, brought home to her the infinite value of each human being created by God.

In 1995, with Colin’s help, she set up a charity for disabled children in South India. It gave her a sense of purpose in life that radically transformed the ensuing years. This changed perspective taught her the danger of euthanasia, which encourages people to make ultimate choices at a low point in their lives, on the assumption that it will never change for the better.

As someone who lived a life of considerable suffering, Alison often spoke of the opportunity to share in the sufferings of Christ, not merely as a privilege but as “the greatest privilege in the world.” Shortly before her death Colin Harte wrote, “Alison frequently heard it said after someone had died, ‘At least his (or her) suffering is now over.’ She asked me several times not to let anyone say that after she died, because she felt it diminished the particular gift she had to offer God. The Church provides a beautiful and profound teaching on suffering, but for many Catholics there is little understanding or appreciation of it. Alison’s life of intense suffering – physical, social, emotional, mental and spiritual – is an exceptional witness to the privilege and dignity of suffering in union with Christ.”

May she rest in peace