ASSISTED SUICIDE ADVOCATE DIES NATURALLY, PAINLESSLY

LUTON, ENGLAND, May 14, 2002 (LSN.ca) – Euthanasia proponent Diane Pretty, 43, died naturally and painlessly on Saturday, May 11 in a hospice near her home with her husband at her side. She died after slipping into a coma related to complications from motor neuron disease, the degenerative nervous system disorder that, since she contracted it in 1999, had paralysed her from the neck down.  Last fall, Mrs. Pretty and her husband Brian launched a court challenge to win him the right to help her commit suicide without risk of prosecution, reports CNS News. (Suicide is legal in Britain but assisted suicide remains a crime punishable by up to 14 years.) British courts ruled that the “risk of abuse” of such a precedent was clear. Surprisingly, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the British law, denying there is a “right to die,” even though euthanasia is tolerated or legal in several other European countries.  The European court cited “the right to life, without which enjoyment of any of the other rights and freedoms in the Convention was rendered nugatory.” The court also denied its own ability to “create a right to self-determination in the sense of conferring on an individual the entitlement to choose death rather than life.” But Mrs. Pretty’s comment was: “The law has taken all my rights away.”  The BBC quoted Dr. Greg Gardner of the Medical Ethics Alliance, who said the case served to emphasise that there was no right to die under law. “Once you allow a little bit of euthanasia, you end up with quite a lot,” he said, citing Holland, where people nowhere near death are euthanized on request.  Assisted suicide proponents vow to take their campaign to Parliament.  For the CNS News report see:  https://www.cnsnews.com/ForeignBureaus/archive/200205/FOR20020513d.html   For the European Court of Human Rights decision see:  https://www.echr.coe.int/Eng/Press/2002/apr/Prettyjudepress.htm