Diane Pretty was dying. The 43-year-old British woman was in the advanced stages of motor neurone disease, and she wanted the right to allow her husband to help her take her own life.
Pretty wanted to avoid the sort of suffering that those with motor neurone disease often experience — a persistent choking that slowly asphyxiates the sufferer until a coma and then death ensues. Not a pretty way to go.
So Pretty wanted her husband to be able to help her commit suicide and avoid this sort of horrific death. She went to the European Union and sued for the right to end her life to avoid the inevitable suffering. The judges told her no — she had no right to alleviate her suffering by killing herself.
Only three days later, what Pretty always feared happened. She suffered from choking and difficulty breathing until the asphyxia eventually sent her into a coma. On May 12, 2002, she finally died.
Her husband Brian told the BBC, “Diane had to go through the one thing she had foreseen and was afraid of — and there was nothing I could do to help.”
Motor neurone disease took away Pretty’s life, but the British and European courts took away her dignity and self-determination.
Sources:
Diane Pretty dies. The BBC, May 12, 2002.
‘It is wrong to say people can die’. The BBC, May 12, 2002.