Shropshire Star

Shropshire couple fight bid to relax assisted dying laws

A couple from south Shropshire campaigning against assisted dying have taken their fight to the High Court.

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Nikki and Merv Kenward, from Aston-on-Clun, yesterday put their case before three High Court judges sitting in London, having won permission to legally challenge plans to relax laws on assisted suicide.

Encouraging or assisting suicide is illegal under the Suicide Act of 1961. But Mrs Kenward, who is wheelchair-bound after being struck down by Guillain-Barré syndrome in 1990, said recent amendments to the policy on how medical professionals could be dealt with by the courts, if found to have been involved with helping end someone's life, effectively relaxed the law.

The 62-year-old former theatre manger said she and her husband want the amendments removed as they would make prosecution in assisted suicide cases "less likely".

Mrs Kenward said: "If it is not removed, and this becomes the law it will change how we view death. It will create a new means whereby euthanasia is an accepted form of behaviour."

The couple, members of disability rights group Distant Voices and supported by the Christian Legal Centre, were accompanied yesterday by demonstrators who mounted a procession to the Royal Courts of Justice featuring a giant puppet of a judge and separate puppets representing the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Lawyers for both the DPP and the Attorney General asked the judges to dismiss the case.

Lawyers for a man with locked-in syndrome who wishes to take his own life, referred to only as Martin or "AM", also argued in support of of the DPP.

Sir Brian Leveson, sitting with Mr Justice Wilkie and Mr Justice Cranston, said the court would give its judgment at a later date.

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