Last week the high court took another small but carefully considered step in extending the right of people suffering from degenerative disorders in Britain to die with dignity. It lifted a travel ban on a terminally ill woman that was preventing her travelling to Switzerland for an assisted suicide. Mrs Z, aged 46, was examined by a psychiatrist at the court's request. She was found to be mentally competent, under no pressure from others, and fully aware of her actions. The court rightly ruled that in these circumstances it "should not frustrate directly the rights of Mrs Z". She has now died from an overdose of barbiturates at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich.

Suicide was abolished as a criminal offence in Britain in 1961 but people suffering from incurable degenerative disorders face several legal problems. First, if they wish to end their lives but are incapable of carrying it out, neither medics nor family members are allowed to help them. Diane Pretty, who lost all her functions except her mind from motor neurone disease, appealed to the courts in 2001 to grant her husband the right to assist her to die without facing the threat of criminal prosecution. She lost. Medics face other anomalies: the current law allows doctors to accelerate death by withholding a drug, but illogically rules administering a drug to achieve the same end is illegal. In the case of Tony Bland, the football fan crushed into a permanent vegetative state in the Hillsborough disaster, courts cleared the way for the withdrawal of his artificial feeding tubes by declaring them "medical treatment". But judges have rightly refused to make sweeping judgments in such cases, restricting their decisions to the particular facts, and leaving it to parliament to provide "new all-embracing principles ... when society as a whole is substantially divided on the relevant moral issues".

Hence Mrs Z's need to travel to Switzerland, which allows assisted suicides. But British judges are wrong to believe our society is deeply divided. Polls suggest 80% support the principle of assisted euthanasia. Lord Joffe, a retired human rights lawyer, has drafted a bill allowing those suffering from unbearable conditions to seek assistance to die. This includes strict safeguards to prevent undue pressure being applied to vulnerable patients. True, a small religious minority is opposed. They have the right to believe in the sanctity of life, but no right to impose that view on others. The bill has now been debated in two parliamentary sessions. If Lord Joffe does not succeed in the current one he should press on, and hope for third time lucky.