Marie Fleming, a terminally ill 59-year-old, lost her challenge to the blanket ban on assisted suicide. Fleming, who is in the final stages of multiple sclerosis, was refused to lawfully end her life by the Supreme Court.
Fleming and her family had initially brought the challenge to the High Court, but when this was rejected here, they then brought the case to the Supreme Court. Ms. Fleming and her partner Mr. Tom Curran have expressed their disappointment at the ruling, according to the Irish Times.
“It’s very difficult to understand how a person with a disability can be deprived of something that’s legally available to everybody else, every able-bodied person,” Mr Curran said after the judgment this morning. “And for that not to be discriminatory under the constitution. That’s something we fail to understand.”
Mr. Curran speaking to the press after the Supreme Court ruling today
Mr Curran continued: “The court has ruled on Marie’s future, as far as they’re concerned, and we will now go back to Wicklow and live our lives until such time as Marie makes up her mind that she has had enough. And in that case the court will have an opportunity to decide on my future.”
The Supreme Court ruled that there was no constitutional right which the State or courts could vindicate, either to die by suicide or assisted suicide.
Ms. Fleming, who could not attend the hearing today due to the fact that she was suffering from a chest infection, had challenged the law on the premise that the Criminal Law Suicide Act of 1993 had infringed on her personal autonomy rights under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights.
However, the court did state that the DPP would act in a “humane and sensitive way” in the case of an assisted suicide for Ms. Fleming.
