Disabled Irish woman loses assisted suicide court case A woman in the final stages of multiple sclerosis does not have the right to an assisted death, the Irish Supreme Court has ruled. Marie Fleming, 59, said she wanted to die when she chose, but would need help to go through with it. Her partner, Tom Curran, had said he would assist her, which would be illegal. Ms Fleming was contesting the ban on assisted suicide on the basis that the law discriminates against the severely disabled. Suicide was decriminalised in Ireland in 1993. The court rejected the argument that the decriminalisation necessarily conferred a right to die. In delivering the judgment, Chief Justice Susan Denham said the Irish constitution did not contain any "explicit right to commit suicide, or to determine the time of one's own death." After the ruling, Mr Curran questioned its logic. "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," he said. And for that not to be discriminatory under the constitution, that's something we fail to understand. Mr Curran seemed to suggest he would still be prepared to help his partner die. He said that having exhausted all legal avenues in Ireland, he would return to the home he shared with Ms Fleming in Arklow, 65 kilometres south of Dublin, where he would abide by her decision. "The court has ruled on Marie's future as far as they're concerned," he said. Now, he said, the two would "live our lives until such a time when Marie makes up her mind that she has had enough." Asked if this meant he would still be willing to help his partner to die, he said: "That will only come up when Marie makes a decision herself."