European Court rejects assisted suicide appeal

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- In a blow to proponents of assisted suicide, Europe's leading human rights court threw out an appeal Monday by a terminally ill and paralyzed British woman who wants her husband to help end her life.

"The law has taken all my rights away," said Diane Pretty, speaking in London with the aid of a keyboard and a computer voice synthesizer.

Pretty, 43, suffers from a motor neuron disease that has left her paralyzed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair. Her husband, Brian Pretty, said doctors had told them Diane's life expectancy was "limited to months."

Diane Pretty brought her case to the European court after Britain's highest appeals court ruled in November that her husband could not be guaranteed immunity from prosecution if he helped her die. Suicide is legal in Britain, but helping someone else commit suicide is a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

On Monday, a seven-judge panel of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, sided unanimously with British authorities.

In their ruling, the judges said they "could not but be sympathetic" to Mrs. Pretty's effort to avoid "a distressing death."

However, they rejected her lawyers' claims that British laws infringed on portions of the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteeing the right to life, prohibiting inhuman or degrading treatment and protecting respect for private life.

At a news conference with his wife in London on Monday, Brian Pretty said the couple and their supporters were launching a petition to support the right to assisted suicide.

The court's judgment is considered a test case for Europe, where the Netherlands became the first country to fully legalize euthanasia on April 1. Similar legislation is expected to come into force soon in Belgium, and other countries, including Switzerland, France, Germany and Sweden, tolerate assisted suicides.