Family Law

The U.K.'s highest court has refused a terminally-ill motor neurone disease patient to challenge current legislation on assisted dying.

Supreme Court justices rejected a bid by Noel Conway to appeal against an earlier ruling in his fight over laws that prevent him from being helped to die.

The 68-year-old, from Shrewsbury, says that being forced to choose between "unacceptable options" to end his life is "barbaric."

Conway, who wants medical assistance to die when he has less than six months left to live, has the mental capacity to make the decision and has made a "voluntary, clear, settled and informed" choice, he argued.

However, in a three-page decision issued today, Supreme Court judges turned down Conway's request, a retired lecturer who is paralysed from the neck down.

The three supreme court justices – Lady Hale, the Supreme Court president, Lord Reed, the deputy president, and Lord Kerr – acknowledged that the issue was of “transcendent public importance."