8mm
Posted on 11/11/2007 10:16:29 AM PST by wagglebee
MORE than 30 Britons have written statements confessing to helping friends or relatives to die at a Swiss euthanasia clinic as part of a test case to change the law.
Details of the admissions will be submitted to the director of public prosecutions (DPP) as part of a legal challenge by a woman suffering from a progressive form of multiple sclerosis.
She wants her husband to be allowed to accompany her to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich without the threat of prosecution and is seeking a statement from the DPP clarifying the law.
Debbie Purdy, 44, from Bradford, says that unless she gets a guarantee that her husband, Omar Puente, will not be prosecuted for helping her to travel to Switzerland to commit suicide, she will be forced to take her life sooner than she would like while she is still capable of travelling alone.
The Home Office has said helping someone to make arrangements to travel to Dignitas could constitute an offence under the 1961 Suicide Act, which states someone who aids the suicide of another will be liable to 14 years in jail. Decisions to prosecute in individual cases are at the discretion of the DPP.
Purdy, a former marketing officer, said: “I want absolute clarity that my husband will not be prosecuted. If the DPP does not give this assurance, then I will need to go to Dignitas a long time before I want to die. I want to wait until the last possible moment, when I can no longer bear being alive, but I cannot do that while there is a chance my husband will be prosecuted.”
Purdy, whose case is backed by Dignity in Dying, the campaign group, is asking the DPP to specify what would be considered to be aiding and abetting a suicide. It wants to know whether he could be prosecuted for booking her into the clinic, helping to push her wheelchair there or making her travel arrangements.
Her solicitor, Saimo Chahal, a partner in the law firm Bind-mans, said: “The objective is to persuade the DPP to issue a policy statement saying that those assisting their loved ones to travel to Zurich to have a medically assisted suicide will not be liable to prosecution under Section 2 (1) of the Suicide Act.
“A prosecution has never been brought against such a person despite some high-profile cases. People who do help their loved ones should not face the additional anxiety and distress that they may be prosecuted.”
Last year Stefan Sliwinski, 35, of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, was arrested after accompanying his mother Valere Sliwinski, 58, who had cancer and multiple sclerosis, to her assisted death in Zurich. He was never charged.
Michael Irwin, a retired GP from Cranleigh, Surrey, has escorted three people to Dignitas and has been interviewed by the police three times. He has provided a witness statement to be used in the Purdy case.
He said: “I support this attempt by Debbie Purdy to try to obtain a public statement from the DPP that those assisting with arrangements to visit Dignitas will not be prosecuted.”
Ashley Riley, head of campaigns at Dignity in Dying, said: “The very least Debbie deserves is to win this case.”
Over the past two weeks Chahal has gathered written statements from 36 Britons who have helped their friends or relatives to die at Dignitas. As more than 70 Britons have committed suicide at the Swiss clinic, further declarations are expected.
The DPP said that Purdy’s request would be considered when it was received.
What selfish arrogance.
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(Right-to-die) + (socialized medicare) = Duty-to-Die
I can see the British NHS Board of Governors drooling at the prospect of legalizing euthanasia in Britain. I’m betting they’re quietly all for these stunts as phase I.
Privatized medicine regards patients as customers.
Socialized medicine regards patients as liabilities.
Unfortunately, you are 100% correct.
How can you prosecute people who admit to killing someone in another country?! For example if a husband and wife live in Japan and the husband kills his wife, wouldn’t Japanese law prosecute that case? Why would American courts get involved in a criminal matter on foreign soil?!
A dear uncle of mine, actually a good friend of my father's who I had known all my life and was very close to, died of cancer a few years back. Pa was still alive then and called from Florida with the news. I was still on Cape Cod then, but made the pilgrimage up to central NH to see Wesley before he passed.
When his wife left us alone for a minute, he asked if I remembered where the guns were kept. I did and he asked me to get him one of the revolvers.
Man, I broke down and cried. I couldn't do it even though this dear friend was begging me with what turned out to be pretty close to his last breath.
You're exactly right.
And here's another thing. Some 30,000 Americans commit suicide every year, without manipulatively dragging our major medical, legal, and political structures into it for "assistance" or "permission."
It's a wicked and/or a pathetic thing to commit suicide "freelance" --- though only God can judge in the case of the clinically depressed or otherwise impaired. But that doesn't even compare to the rotten evil of "legal" or "assisted" suicide where you corrupt your own friends and family, and the major institutions of society, as your accomplices.
Doctors, nurses, and hospice workers should not be pulled into the picture as accessories to the deed, because they are, and should be, unalterably committed to the patient's health: and nobody is healthier dead. Lawyers, judges, and politicians should not be implicated in suicide because they're supposed to be dedicated to our rights and liberties, and death effectively snuffs ALL rights and all liberties.
I have never quite understood why those would-be suicides who say their #1 value is personal autonomy, don't just do it --- like those other 30,000 self-respectng autonomous suicides* --- and leave the rest of us out of it.
* (Hoping the irony here is apparent.)
I really can’t see her point of view here. I don’t really fear death I don’t think. What I fear is not having made the most of my time here. I’ve been through some really dark, depressing times and never ONCE have I contemplated suicide. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to end their own life.
I thank God that the means to do so were not easily available. I also thank God that I had the benefit of being taught certain religious and moral truths which made me realize what a mean, cruel, cowardly, treasonable and ungrateful thing suicide really is.
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