She’s allowed to commit suicide, because suicide was decriminalized in Ireland in 1993. But she has MS, so she can’t commit suicide, and what the state won’t allow is help from someone else.
That’s exactly the situation Eric MacDonald’s wife Elizabeth was in. It’s a bad situation. Knowing you’re going to become ever more disabled, and that the more disabled you are the more suicide becomes physically impossible – it’s terrifying. It could happen to any of us, and it’s terrifying.
Ms Fleming, a former lecturer from County Wicklow, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986.
She is cared for by her partner, Tom Curran, and has two adult children.
The four-day appeal hearing was told that she is in the final stages of MS, can only move her head, cannot swallow and lives in constant pain.
Her legal team argued that the ban on assisted suicide is discriminatory towards severely disabled people.
Lawyers for Ms Fleming told the court that she should be given the same right to die by suicide as an able-bodied person.
But the court ruled no.