Judge’s landmark ruling on right to life

A HIGH Court judge’s ruling that a brain-damaged, minimally conscious woman should not be allowed to die has been hailed as a landmark decision that clarifies the law relating to the care of the severely disabled.

Mr Justice Baker concluded that life-supporting treatment should not be withdrawn from the 52-year-old former hairdresser and said there was dignity in the life of a disabled person who was “well cared for and kept comfortable”.

The judge said an English court had never before been asked to consider whether life-supporting treatment should be withdrawn from a patient who was not in a persistent vegetative state but was minimally conscious.

His ruling yesterday came nearly two decades after leading judges ruled that Liverpool football fan Tony Bland – left in a permanent vegetative state after being crushed in the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster – could be allowed to die.