Euro court rejects Diane Pretty's 'right to die' appeal

Terminally–ill Diane Pretty today lost her right–to–die case at the European Court of Human Rights.

Mrs Pretty, 43, wants her husband Brian to be allowed to help her commit suicide without fear of prosecution.

The European court ruling was her last hope of a legal seal of approval to what she sees as her right to die with dignity.

Mrs Pretty, who lives in Luton, Bedfordshire, is dying of motor neurone disease and her life expectancy is described as "very poor".

Rather than endure the final stages of a distressing and undignified illness, the mother–of–two wants to die when she wants to – and she needs the help of husband.

Suicide is not a crime in England, but assisting a suicide is, and Mrs Pretty has been battling in vain for a guarantee that Brian will not be prosecuted.

She turned to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg when Britain's Director of Public Prosecutions refused to promise immunity for Brian, and subsequent appeals were rejected.

The speed of the verdict – less than six weeks after the hearing – reflects the urgency for the Pretty family: normally applicants to the Human Rights Court have to wait months and sometimes years for a result.

Mrs Pretty's condition was diagnosed in 1999 and has deteriorated rapidly. She now speaks through a voice simulator and has to be fed through a tube to her stomach.

She faces death soon from respiratory failure and pneumonia when her breathing muscles become affected by the disease.

She desperately wants clearance from the judges today, and her husband has said he would not go against his wife's wishes by assisting her death illegally.

The judges at the European Court of Human Rights said the fact that assisted

suicide was a crime in England was not a breach of her human rights.

The ruling stated: "To seek to build into the law an exemption for those judged to be incapable of committing suicide would seriously undermine the protection of life which the 1961 Suicide Act was intended to safeguard and greatly increase the risk of abuse."

Mrs Pretty's solicitor, Mona Arshi, from the civil rights organisation Liberty,

said: "We are obviously disappointed that Diane has lost her case, both for her

and for other people in the same position.

"We really believe the court had an opportunity to remedy a defect in current law which placed Diane and people like her in a tragic trap.

"It seems odd that Diane doesn't have a right to die how she wishes when a court earlier this year upheld 'Miss B's' right to require doctors to turn off her life support machine.

"We call on the Government to take action to remedy this injustice."

Today's judgement said the European Convention on Human Rights safeguarded the

right to life, without the enjoyment of which other rights and freedoms

protected in the Convention were null and void.

Although the Convention also protected against inhuman or degrading treatment, in Mrs Pretty's case it was not the UK Government which had inflicted such treatment upon her.

Nor, said the judges, was there any complaint that Mrs Pretty was not receiving adequate care from the State medical authorities.

The Convention safeguarded both the right to life (Article 2) and banned inhuman or degrading treatment (Article 3), and the two had to be considered together, the judgment said.

It went on: "Article 2 is first and foremost a prohibition on the use of lethal force or other conduct which might lead to the death of a human being, and did not confer any claim on an individual to require a State to permit or facilitate his or her death.

"The court could not but be sympathetic to the applicant's apprehension that without the possibility of ending her life she faced the prospect of a distressing death.

"Nonetheless, the positive obligation on the part of the State which has been invoked (Mrs Pretty's claim that the Government was obliged to prevent the inhuman and degrading effects of her disease) would require that the State sanction actions intended to terminate life, an obligation that could not be derived from Article 3.

"The Court therefore concludes that no positive obligation arose under Article 3 in this context and that there had, accordingly, been no violation of that provision."

Neither had Mrs Pretty's "right to respect for private life", which was

protected under the Convention, been infringed by the fact that assisted suicide

was illegal, the judges said.

The prohibition on assisted suicide was a measure intended to protect the weak, vulnerable, and those not able to take "informed decisions" against "acts intended to end life or to assist in ending life", the judgment said.

The blanket nature of the ban on assisted nature was not disproportionate, it said.

The UK Government had provided flexibility in individual cases by requiring consent from the DPP to bring a prosecution, and it did not seem "arbitrary" for the law to prohibit assisted suicide while allowing for such flexibility in deciding whether to prosecute in the event of an assisted suicide.

Neither was it disproportionate in this case for the DPP to give no advance undertaking to Brian Pretty that he would not be prosecuted if he helped his wife to die – to do so would raise "strong arguments based on the rule of law" against any bid by the Government to exempt individuals or classes of individuals from the operation of the law.

The fact that the UK's Suicide Act did not distinguish between those who were and who were not physically capable of committing suicide could not be seen as breaching Human Rights Convention rules on discrimination.

"Cogent reasons exist for not seeking to distinguish between those able and unable to commit suicide unaided," the judgment said.

"The borderline between the two categories would often be a very fine one, and to seek to build into the law an exemption for those judged to be incapable of committing suicide would seriously undermine the protection of life which the 1961 Act was intended to safeguard and greatly increase the risk of abuse."