Terminally ill woman wants to die with dignity

A terminally ill Wicklow woman has told the High Court that she needs assistance to die peacefully and with dignity or face a horrible death.

Marie Fleming, 58, is taking a landmark case to establish a right to end her life with assistance.

She gave evidence to a specially-convened three-judge High Court this afternoon.

Ms Fleming was diagnosed with MS in the 1980s and is in the final stages of the condition.

She told the court she had come to ask for help to die while she still had her voice.

Ms Fleming said she had suffered for 24 years and had been informed that she was now in the terminal stages of the illness and may choke to death.

She described her daily life and said she has seven different carers.

"When you have to be showered, toileted and fed you start to feel like a nobody," she said.

Ms Fleming said she was in constant pain and while she tried to keep her head up, most days it was bowed.

She said she simply did not like what was happening to her and palliative care was not suitable for her as she would be doing herself an injustice.

Ms Fleming is challenging a section of the Criminal Law Suicide Act, which makes it an offence to help someone take their own life.

Her lawyers earlier told the court they will argue that the section of the act is contrary to the provisions of the Constitution and incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Senior Counsel Brian Murray told the court she is not challenging the right of the State as such to render it an offence to assist someone to take their own life.

But she is arguing any such offence should be qualified so as to permit an exception to be made in her extreme circumstances.

He said she will argue it is a violation of rights protected by the Constitution including the right to privacy, dignity, autonomy and self-determination.

Preventing the provision of assistance to those who want to end their life but are unable to do so impairs those rights, he said.

Mr Murray added the act was broader and blunter than it needs to be and condemned her to a life of pain, indignity and misery.

A similarly situated able-bodied person could end their own life by their own hand and a narrow exception should be made that could enable her to end her life without creating a risk of harm to others, he said.

Mr Murray read from a sworn statement given by Ms Fleming in which she said she joined Dignitas five years ago, but did not want to die "in an industrial estate far from home".

She said she wishes she had taken her own life before she lost the use of her arms.

She said her partner, Tom Curran, is willing to assist her to end her life when the time comes. She wants to know she can die at a time of her choosing in her partner's arms without any fear of him being prosecuted.

Ms Fleming is confined to a wheelchair, unable to move any of her limbs, and her speech and swallowing are significantly affected.

She says she "cannot endure much more pain", does not wish to endure significant further deterioration and believes she could die "within months" rather than years.

The action by Ms Fleming, the first of its kind in Ireland, is before President of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, Mr Justice Paul Carney and Mr Justice Gerard Hogan.

It is expected to last two weeks.

The case is against Ireland, the Attorney General and the DPP, while the Human Rights Commission has also provided submissions.

Ms Fleming, a former lecturer at University College Dublin, wants an order declaring Section 2(2) of the 1993 Act invalid under the Constitution and incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Alternatively, she wants an order requiring the DPP to issue guidelines setting out what factors are taken into account in deciding whether to prosecute a person who assists her in ending her life.

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