BRITAIN: The husband of a critically ill British woman has won a legal fight to take his wife to Switzerland to end her life, a ruling that throws Britain's laws against assisting suicide into confusion.
A judge at London's High Court yesterday said it was not for him to decide whether the husband of a woman identified only as "Mrs Z" should be allowed to take her abroad to end her life and overturned a temporary ban.
While effectively lifting the ban on anyone helping Mrs Z to travel abroad, the judge said it was for police to decide whether to charge anyone who assisted her to die.
"I have decided to discharge the injunction," Mr Justice Hedley said in his ruling. "The court should not frustrate indirectly the rights of Mrs Z. The role of Mr Z is now a matter for the criminal justice agencies."
Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland have each passed various laws allowing assisted euthanasia, but Britons risk up to 14 years in jail for helping a patient to die, a penalty that is among the harshest in Europe.
The Voluntary Euthanasia Society (VES), a group which promotes greater choice for patients wanting to end their life, welcomed the ruling. "The law has been unclear for sometime and it is now in disrepute," said VES spokesman Mr Mark Slattery.
"If Mr Z comes back from Switzerland without Mrs Z and is not arrested, then it leaves the Suicide Act in tatters."
The case was brought to court by a local council which provides home care for Mrs Z over fears it would be liable if it allowed her to leave the country and end her life. It last week requested and was granted a temporary ban.
The judge ruled that the council had fulfilled its legal obligations by informing officials of the couple's plans to travel to Switzerland.
Mark Everall QC, representing the local council which provides care for the woman in her own home, told the judge that the husband had at first refused to help his wife, who is suffering from cerebellar ataxia, a progressive degenerative brain disease.
But as her condition, first diagnosed in 1997, worsened, he made inquiries about assisted suicides in Switzerland.
Assisted suicide has divided religious groups and the medical community not only in Britain but across Europe.
A poll published by the VES in September found 47 per cent of Britons would help to break the law to help terminally ill loved ones die. More than 20 Britons have already travelled to Zurich to end their lives at a clinic run by Swiss charity Dignitas. British police last year investigated a woman who took her husband to die but the investigation was later dropped.