A terminally-ill woman has vowed to take her legal battle to allow her husband help her commit suicide to the House of Lords after the High Court rejected her appeal. Mrs Diane Pretty (42) is paralysed from the neck down by motor neurone disease and is unable to speak, although fully mentally competent.
Yesterday, the High Court rejected her appeal to overturn the ruling by the Director of Public Prosecutions that he could not guarantee Mrs Pretty's husband, Brian, would not be prosecuted if he helped her to die.
In the first case of its kind to test the current British law on assisted suicide, lawyers for Mrs Pretty had argued that the DPP's decision breached her human right not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.
They had also argued that she was being treated less favourably under the Suicide Act, which decriminalised suicide but made assisted suicide an offence carrying a maximum 14-year sentence, because of her physical disability.
Three High Court judges ruled against Mrs Pretty and refused leave to appeal, saying "deliberate killing, even with consent and in the most pitiable of circumstances, is murder". However, Mrs Pretty's lawyers can still apply directly to the House of Lords. If permission for an appeal is granted, and given Mrs Pretty's physical deterioration, a hearing is expected within a few weeks.
Outside the court, Mrs Pretty, from Luton in Bedfordshire, conveyed her feelings about the ruling through her husband. He said: "She is disappointed and very angry because she feels that she has got a right to do what she feels is right." He said the couple would take the case to the Lords "and she's going to carry on fighting".
The civil rights group, Liberty, which supported Mrs Pretty's case, accused the judges of failing to acknowledge the difference between Mrs Pretty's "exceptional circumstances" and the "very necessary protection needed in the case of suicide. Diane is not in need of protection. Society isn't served by denying Diane's wish to die with dignity rather than endure a more protracted end."
But anti-euthanasia campaigners hailed the ruling as "a victory for common sense". Dr Michael Howitt-Wilson, deputy chairman of the pressure group, Alert, said any other decision would have undermined the right to life. "It would have made the right to life an impossibility. If one has the right not to be killed, to give somebody immunity against killing would make a nonsense of that," Mr Howitt-Wilson added.
Giving the reasons for rejecting the case, Mr Justice Tuckey said the court was not being asked to approve a physician-assisted suicide "in carefully defined circumstances" but to allow a family member help a loved one to die "in circumstances of which we know nothing". He said while Mrs Pretty's difficulties were "very considerable and distressing" the DPP had no power to give the undertaking she had asked for.
He also said the judges were not persuaded that a distinction could be drawn between assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia and there was no evidence that public opinion had shifted on the issue.