Terry Prone: More of us support assisted dying — but still we have no discussion

If you know the overwhelming majority of your constituents are on side with the basic concept of assisted dying, why would you, as a politician, not want the matter discussed?

Marie Flemings died naturally 10 years ago, after a long fight against the ban on assisted suicide. Picture: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie

Jackie Kennedy had cancer, when cancer was almost always fatal. A paparazzo captured a shot of herself and her partner, Maurice Templesman, in Central Park. She was always thin, but now she was skeletal, swamped in a camel coat, a headscarf loosely fastened at her neck. She could have been anybody. Anybody sick and frail.

She was admitted to hospital for more tests, then released. Maybe a day later, she died, surrounded, according to the media of the time, by her family. Drinking coffee with my mother that week, I marvelled at the grim good fortune that had allowed her to leave the hospital which had confirmed they were fresh out of treatment options for her, and co-incidentally die a day or so later.