She could have hung herself, slashed her wrists, jumped off a tall building, or stepped in front of the Trans-European Express.
She could have died silently and far from the glare of crass newspaper headlines. Neither you nor I know what exactly her life was like, but living with chronic or even mild depression can have debilitating costs that make life not worth living any more. We all have our own measures for what's acceptable and what isn't, so if the person chooses to leave, then that's entirely their own affair as far as I'm concerned.
I faced the same crisis in my life watching my Father die an horrific death from lung cancer.
I watched as my Mother slowly fell to pieces while we tended to him in the family home - we had ONE experience with Irish medical care and he and we decided he was coming home. It was a long year. I was a middle-teenaged kid lost in art and music. Those things were put aside in the call to a greater duty that forced me to grow up at several times the rate of my peers in taking on responsibilities that were years beyond my experience. But they had to be met. This isolated me as much as it did my Father. As things got gradually worse, my Mother and I began to have conversations that were, at the time, very difficult to plot our way through. It led to things that still burn even at the mere thought of.
My Mother was exhausted. My Father was getting worse and worse as we neared the end. Choices were few, money was tight, the state stepped in and tried to buy us out with a cheque for £2200 in lieu of my Mother receiving a pension. My Father worked for CIE, the national transport authority. Their solicitor asked to meet my Mam and he called by the family home one day when we were in the middle of the daily errands in caring for a dying person. He placed the cheque on the table and asked my Mam what the estimated costs of the plot and the funeral/wake might be. I saw what he was doing. As did my Mam. We ran him out of the house (after I'd gotten the local kids to deflate all of his tyres) and didn't tell my Dad anything about it.
At the time, euthanasia wasn't a great conversation starter, but it was something that we both struggled with. We wanted all this suffering to end, nobody wants to see their loved ones fade away in such horrible and endless pain. I knew what I wanted to do, and I'm pretty sure my Mam thought about it too. But before either of us could intervene, the doctors did that instead. The Final Solution. Instead of giving him his usual dose, he was given enough to pass into unconsciousness and soon after - his eventual death.
It was NOT a natural death: it was hastened to its end in order to 'protect' the children from further horror, the remaining parent too.
Yet we never discuss these things openly.
They happen EVERY DAY all over the world.
The pharmaceutical corporations make vast profits from the suffering of dying people. It's not in their financial interest to offer drugs that'll hasten the dying to their death. It IS in their interests to keep that person alive as long as possible, thereby increasing their profits regardless of the moral turpitude behind it. The doctors and consultants are the actors out front, the corporations are the orchestras in the pits. They work in harmony and they make vast profits from the model as it currently stands. When the ordinary Paddy or Biddy decide to take things in hand, this doesn't bade well for the profit margins. If it takes a big man eighteen months to die, then do the math and add up the expenses on your end in contrast to the profits at their end.
Now you begin to see why the 'moral' issue of euthanasia/suicide is bandied about even though there's nothing moral about stepping into someone else's life and making their decisions for them. Like the girl in the attached article, if the person has their wits about them and can clearly explain their motives to leave, then who the fuck are you or anyone else to tell them otherwise?
Ask yourself: if it came down to it and it was one of your loved ones lying there in agony, would/could you knowingly add a little extra in the daily doses or would you allow others to make your mind up for you leaving you to count out the minutes until this terrible suffering stops?
If for even a moment you think that doctors would never do such a thing, then you're living in in la-la land.
Doctors and nurses put people to sleep every day, all over the world.
If it were me that stuck my Father with a syringe to ease his way into the darkness sooner than cancer did, I would be - in the eyes of the law as it stands - a killer. A murderer of my own blood. When the doctor or nurse does it, nobody bats an eyelid - it's one of those 'moral hazards' faced by medical staff to which each one must make their choices just as abortions/termination medical staff do. Some do it out of their own morals, others refuse to do it at all.
Euthanasia levels that playing field, and gives the person in question the right to make up their own mind.
This might scare some doctors - but not others.
Abortion, suicide, assisted euthanasia - they all have one thing in common: the right to choose.
This is what upsets the 'morally upstanding' types and reduces their profit margins - the fear of losing control over life, and death.
If the lady in question follows through on her plans, then I would wish her well and hope that it's quick and painless.
Many others in similiar situations have to be scraped up off the train tracks, washed off the concrete beneath a tall building, or have their noose cut.