Marie Fleming’s bid to strike down laws which she said would prevent her having a peaceful and dignified death may have ended at the Supreme Court but her quiet courage seems likely to endure.
Her case was expedited through the courts due to the seriousness of the issues and her terminal condition. She is in constant pain in the final stages of multiple sclerosis with perhaps under two years to live.
She gave compelling and dignified evidence before a hushed High Court last December about the reality of a daily existence, deprived of any personal autonomy. She told of how, assisted by seven carers, she struggles with severe and sometimes unbearable pain barely managed by medication which leaves her with distressing side effects. Her doctor had said her mind and forceful clarity are all she has left.
The three High Court judges had actually come down off the bench to sit alongside her as she gave evidence from her wheelchair.
They were told she had confronted any fears she ever had about dying and was at peace with the world.
“I’ve come to court today, whilst I still can use my speech, my voice, to ask you to assist me in having a peaceful, dignified death . . . in the arms of Tom and my children,” she had said. She had considered travelling to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland some years ago but was dissuaded by her partner and because she did not want to die away from her home and family. She regretted she had not taken her own life while she was still physically able to do so.
She insisted she is fully mentally competent to decide when she wants to die and, with help, could take the final step herself whether by moving her head to self-administer gas through a face mask or having a lethal injection via a canula put into her arm.
She was not in court when the High Court ruled last January it could not find in her favour because that could open a “Pandora’s Box” leading to the involuntary deaths of vulnerable others. The DPP, the court hoped, would adopt a humane approach to her situation and it described her as perhaps the most remarkable witness the judges had ever encountered with courage in adversity that was “both humbling and inspiring”.
During the appeal heard over four days last February in the Supreme Court, the seven judges actively engaged with lawyers for both sides with a clear concern emerging about the wider implications of any ruling in favour of Ms Fleming.
The woman who had so impressed all who heard her in the High Court was too unwell with a chest infection yesterday to come to court to hear the Supreme Court make the final pronouncement by the Irish courts on her bid for some control over her destiny.
There is no right under the Constitution to assisted suicide in even the “very distressing situation” of Ms Fleming, the court found. It also regarded as significant that the European Court of Human Rights and courts in the UK, US and Canada had rejected claims of a right to assisted suicide.
The court made the observation that it remains open to lawmakers, if they believed measures with appropriate safeguards could be enacted that would address her predicament, to legislate. An appeal to the European Court of Human Rights remains an option but other decisions of that court are not supportive of her case.
It has ruled it is primarily for individual states to assess the risk and likely incidence of abuse if the general ban on assisted suicides was relaxed or exceptions allowed.
Tom Curran, whom Ms Fleming said had “been there with me for 18 years, through good and bad”, said yesterday the family would study the judgment before deciding whether to go to Europe.
For now, they would continue to live their lives in Wicklow “until such time as Marie makes up her mind that she has had enough”.
