Debbie Purdy In New Right To Die Law Change Battle

HER landmark legal battle to allow her husband to accompany her to a foreign clinic to end her life led to new government guidance on the right to die. Now Debbie Purdy, the multiple sclerosis sufferer, has revealed that she is too frail and impoverished to make the journey to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Purdy, 51, said she hoped to die at home in Bradford, where she lives with Omar Puente, her jazz musician husband.

To do so she is having to consider various strategies that would pose the least likelihood of anyone who helped her to die then having to face arrest and prosecution. One is for a friend or relative to prepare a lethal potion for her to drink unaided through a straw. She is concerned, however, that someone without medical training could provide a dose that is insufficient to kill her.

“I am not going to Dignitas because the cost is huge and because it would be too difficult,” she said. “When I won the court battle I could probably have got to Switzerland. Now I could not do that. Then I had money, now I don’t.

“It costs a lot of money to go to Switzerland and you have to spend several days there because you need to make sure you have thought about the options.”

Despite her increasing infirmity, Purdy renewed her call for politicians to change the law on assisting a suicide, which carries a maximum 14-year sentence.

Her current predicament means she is fearful about how her life will end, particularly as she cannot predict how quickly her condition will ravage her body.

“Ten years ago I could walk. The next stage was a wheelchair that I could control myself. Then I had to use an electric chair. Now I find it difficult to sit up because it’s hard to keep my head upright,” she said.

“I use voice recognition to make my computer work and I need hoists to do anything. I spend most of my day in bed watching news bulletins on television. I have spasms in my legs and my condition keeps changing. That is why I need the law to be looked at again urgently.”

Six years ago Purdy argued in the High Court that it would be a breach of her human rights if Puente had the prospect of being prosecuted hanging over him if he accompanied her to Dignitas.

The case led Kier Starmer, then director of public prosecutions, to issue new guidelines to clarify the circumstances in which relatives and friends would not face prosecution if they accompanied a loved one to the suicide clinic.

“The guidelines say that if a friend or relative — though not a campaigner or a doctor — is motivated by compassion rather than by greed or financial reward, then they will not be prosecuted,” said Purdy.

She believes the guidelines, although they are untested, would be applicable if someone were helped to die on British soil.

However, she shares the concerns of Chris Woodhead, a former chief inspector of schools who has motor neurone disease, that although the guidance exists, the law still classifies assisting a suicide as a crime. As a result, each case is assessed individually by the Crown Prosecution Service with police often interviewing relatives and friends.

Purdy is watching with interest the case of M, a man who suffered a massive stroke that left him able to communicate only by blinking.

M, whose wife does not want to help him to die, has asked for the guidance to be altered to allow medical professionals and campaigners to assist a suicide without facing prosecution. A legal ruling is expected this summer.

Purdy supports M but ultimately thinks the law needs to change, although she fears politicians lack the will to tackle such a sensitive issue ahead of a general election. “Politicians are cowardly. It’s time the 1961 Suicide Act reflected what is going on in people’s lives right now,” she said.

“Omar, who just wants me to be cured, which is not going to happen, thought that winning the 2008 court case would take my mind off my illness. In a way he was right.

“I did all kinds of thing afterwards. I used to love skydiving but that wasn’t possible by then. Instead I went to Airkix in Manchester, which is a wind tunnel that lifts you 4ft or 5ft off the floor so that you feel you are flying.

“I would find it impossible now, but I have photographs of Omar and me doing that.”

Purdy, who underwent several unsuccessful cycles of IVF, said that being a mother might have meant she “could possibly cope with more than I want to now”.

She added: “People sometimes want to survive for their children, to provide stability and love for their children.”

While Purdy said the 2008 court judgment had eased her worry about her death, those concerns have now returned.

“I am back in the position that I was in 2008 when I spent 23½ hours a day thinking: how am I going to die? What am I going to do?” she said.