The husband of a terminally ill British woman is beginning a landmark High Court battle challenging the refusal of the Director of Public Prosecutions to rule out prosecuting her husband if he helps her commit suicide.
Mrs Diane Pretty, a 42-year-old mother-of-two, from Luton, Bedfordshire, says her condition has impaired the quality of her life so badly that she wants to be able to choose when to die.
She is backed by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and civil rights group Liberty.
Her husband, Brian, says it is degrading to let her live.
"Everybody, like yourself and myself, we can do everything for ourselves. We have the right to refuse whatever we wish to refuse. Diane has not," he said.
"She has got to turn round and have people pull her about and everything else, from the smallest things to whatever she wants, everything has got to be done for her."
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr David Calvert-Smith QC, last week told Mrs Pretty that he could not guarantee that her husband would not face criminal prosecution if he helped her take her own life.
Mrs Pretty is to argue in the court hearing that the Government is subjecting her to inhuman and degrading treatment, breaching the European Convention on Human Rights.
Her husband said: "The way the law stands, somebody in a terminally ill position (who has) attempted to do all the medication and who has attempted to do all the therapies and after all that still cannot handle living with the illness, cannot be helped to die."
PA