A Bradford woman who suffers from a degenerative disease has started a legal challenge to try to get the law on assisted suicide to be clarified so she can decide when she wants to die.

Debbie Purdy, 45, of Undercliffe, who has multiple sclerosis (MS), is attempting to find out whether her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her travel to Switzerland to commit suicide.

She says if the law is not made clear, she might be forced to end her life sooner than she wants to in order to make sure her husband is not jailed.

Miss Purdy was diagnosed with primary progressive MS in March 1995 after she began experiencing symptoms.

"My body didn't respond how I was used to it responding," she said.

"At the end of an evening, I would be walking like a drunkard having not touched a drop. And dancing was like wading through honey."

She met her musician husband, Omar Puente, 46, shortly before her diagnosis and the couple married in 1998.

Since then, her condition has got progressively worse and she now uses a wheelchair and is losing the strength in her arms.

She is a member of Dignitas, the Swiss organisation which operates clinics where people can go to commit suicide, and said she believed she would want to end her life if her pain became persistently unbearable.

However, if she waited until that point she would need help to travel to one of the foreign clinics and does not want her husband to risk going to jail to do this.

Under the Suicide Act 1961, anyone who aids the suicide of another person could be imprisoned for up to 14 years.

About 90 Britons have travelled to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to end their lives.

No one has yet been prosecuted in connection with these suicides, although several have faced lengthy police investigations, but the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) reserves the right to prosecute in any case.

Now Miss Purdy wants the DPP's head Sir Ken Macdonald, QC, to clarify exactly what he would prosecute for and will travel to the Royal Courts of Justice in London next Wednesday for a judicial review of his refusal to publish the policy on the law.

If the court decides no clarification is needed, she said she may have to go to Switzerland before she is ready to die, while she can still travel alone without her husband's help.

"For 13 years, I've been in love with this man, he's everything to me, and I'm not about to see him take a risk of prosecution because of something that's happening to me," she said.

"I wouldn't let him risk imprisonment to let him push my wheelchair to Switzerland. I can do that myself and if it means I have to go before I'm ready to, I would rather do that than risk him being imprisoned.

"As a British citizen, the least I can expect is the law as it relates to me is entirely transparent and I should know exactly what to expect. I know if I go out and burgle a house, I will be prosecuted. But I don't know if my husband helps me leave the country whether he's going to be prosecuted or not.

"For a law to be acceptable as a law, it's got to be transparent - you've got to know the consequences of carrying out certain actions."

Sarah Wootton, chief executive of pro-euthanasia charity Dignity in Dying, which is supporting Miss Purdy's case, said: "Debbie and Omar - and others like them - need to know where they stand with regards to accompanying loved ones abroad to die.

"On the face of it, people who accompany a loved one to Dignitas are liable to up to 14 years in jail, but the fact that no one has yet been prosecuted indicates that there seems to be some sort of unspoken policy operating."

Commenting on Miss Purdy's legal challenge, a Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said: "The Director of Public Prosecutions has no plans to issue further guidance to prosecutors in relation to prosecution policy for this offence, beyond the general guidance contained in the Code for Crown Prosecutors.

"Each case must be reviewed individually in the light of all the available evidence and in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors before deciding whether or not a prosecution should be brought."

Miss Purdy said she would start making arrangements to travel to Switzerland if her challenge on Wednesday was unsuccessful.

"I don't want to die. I'm extremely happy in my life, I love being married to my husband, I love my friends. I don't want to end my life now," she said.

"But if I leave it too late and need his help, he faces 14 years in jail. And that's more frightening to me than going to Switzerland by myself and ending my life before I'm ready."

  • Start or join a debate on this issue in our online forum - Click here