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Today's Paper | October 17, 2024

Published 31 Jul, 2009 12:00am

MS sufferer wins assisted suicide case

LONDON, July 30 Multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy on Thursday won a legal bid to force the British government to clarify the law on assisted suicide.

Britain's House of Lords, the highest court in the country, ruled that the failure to make clear the circumstances in which a person could be prosecuted for accompanying someone abroad to commit suicide infringed her human rights.

Purdy, 46, from Bradford, Multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy laughs while talking to media representa-

northern England, wanted to force the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to give assurances her husband would not be prosecuted if he helped her go to a euthanasia facility overseas.

“I'm ecstatic — I feel like I've been given a reprieve. I want to live my life to the full, but I don't want to suffer unnecessarily at the end of my life,” Purdy said in a statement. The law says assisting suicide is a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.—Reuters

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