An unusual situation has occurred in the UK. For years, proponents of euthanasia have fought to have euthanasia made legal. For years, Parliament has refused to oblige.Some few years ago, the euthanasia lobby changed tactic. It decided to press for assisted suicide to be made legal as a first step. Several bills were brought forward, but again Parliament declined to change the law.
Brits who wanted help to die travelled to an assisted suicide facility in Switzerland. Technically, relatives who accompanied them left themselves open to a charge of assisting a suicide. Police investigated the circumstances on their return, but none of the relatives were prosecuted.
Then a multiple sclerosis sufferer named Debbie Purdy, backed by the organisation that used to be known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society but changed its name to Dignity in Dying, went to the High Court requesting an assurance that her husband would not be prosecuted if he accompanied her on such a journey. Unsurprisingly, the High Court declined to give her such an assurance, and the Appeal Court agreed with that decision.
She appealed to the House of Lords. Lord Phillips, the senior law lord, announcing the Lords' decision, said the law was unclear and the Director of Public Prosecutions must state in what circumstances he would and would not prosecute. The DPP, Keir Starmer, did so, thus effectively allowing assisted suicide in some circumstances without a change in the law by Parliament.
Lord Phillips said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph: "I have enormous sympathy with anyone who finds themselves facing a quite hideous termination of their life as a result of one of these horrible diseases, in deciding they would prefer to end their life more swiftly and avoid that death as well as avoiding the pain and distress that might cause their relatives."
In the meantime, at very considerable expense, the position of highest court in the land was transferred from the House of Lords to the new Supreme Court, which has Lord Phillips as its president.
Entering into the story at this point is a remarkable lady named Alison Davis. She was born with severe spina bifida. She also suffers from hydrocephalus, emphysema, osteoporosis and arthritis. She is confined to a wheelchair, is doubly incontinent and sometimes has intractable pain. For 10 years she wanted to die and several times attempted suicide until friends persuaded her that her life was worth living.
She went to India to visit seriously disabled children and became "mother" to 130 of them. She established a charity to support them and learned Telugu so she could write to them in their own language. She is a committed pro-lifer and heads an organisation called No Less Human, which stands up for the rights of the disabled.
Ms Davis, backed by the Christian Legal Centre, is seeking to challenge the law lords' decision in the Purdy case in the Supreme Court. She said the DPP's guidelines not only are "unfair, unjust and fatally discriminatory against suffering people, who deserve the same presumption in favour of life as any able-bodied person would automatically receive," but have no place in a civilised society.
Her legal challenge says the "expression of the private 'political' view of Lord Phillips in the Daily Telegraph raises a question of apparent bias" and his personal sympathy invalidated the House of Lords decision. (A House of Lords judgment in a previous case regarding immunity of prosecution of Chile's General Pinochet was set aside because Lord Hoffman, one of the law lords, had links to Amnesty International.)
It further claims that "the decision of the former House of Lords is 'unconstitutional' and usurps the power of Parliament," and calls for the full Supreme Court to reconsider the Purdy case.
It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court responds.
