Right to die case fails

Dublin High Court was in recent months the site of a pioneering legal battle where the applicant if successful would have won the legal right to assisted suicide.  However, Marie Fleming yesterday lost her fight.

Totally paralysed, the 59 year old former university lecturer who suffers from multiple sclerosis had petitioned the court on the grounds that her condition was was both unbearable and incurable.

The President of the High Court, Judge Nicholas Kearns, in his judgement said; 'It would be impossible to ensure the aged, disabled, poor, unwanted, rejected would not avail of this option to avoid a sense being a burden on their families and society.'

Increasingly the courts in Britain and elsewhere are being asked to adjudicate on the question of whether the right to die should be enshined in law. A number of European societies as well as two US states allow some form of assisted suicide.

urchase Prints @

Mella Carroll QC: the first woman in the history of the state to be appointed as a judge to the High Court

purchase prints @ Irish Photo Archive