A protest against euthanasia in the US

New Delhi, Jan. 31: The Supreme Court today decided to take a second look at whether people had a right to die with dignity.

The public interest litigation it admitted, however, does not seek the right to put an end to a patient’s life.

All that the petition by Common Cause, an NGO, wants is that a terminally ill patient have the right to refuse life support that “artificially prolongs” his suffering.

This entails the right to make a “living will’’, saying one doesn’t want to be put on ventilators or other life-support machines when one’s recovery is impossible.

Countries where mercy killing is legal, the decision can be left to the doctors and family of a patient in an irreversibly vegetative state. But the living will gives the patient — and the patient alone — the right to make the decision.

Having admitted the petition, the court will now review a 1996 judgment that held that the fundamental right to life did not include the right to die.

In 1994, the Supreme Court had in the P. Rathinam case held that the fundamental right to life included the right not to live a forced life, that is, the right to die. Two years later, that judgment was overruled in the Gian Kaur case.

The NGO today said that although the court in 1996 had ruled against any “right to die’’ per se, it had observed that the right to “die with dignity’’ could be a feature of a right to “live with dignity’’.

Common Cause then argued that the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution included the right to live with dignity. And that a person who had reached a state of permanent unconsciousness or persistent vegetative state could not be said to be “living life with dignity’’.

Additional solicitor-general Gopal Subramanium said there were fears the right might be misused, adding that the government would soon file an affidavit.

The directorate-general of health services had opposed any changes to the law. It said euthanasia not only flew in the face of the Hippocratic oath, but would also hamper medical research on the treatment of incurable diseases.

But the NGO argued in favour of a “living will’’, to be made before the patient slides into a permanent vegetative state. It asked that an expert committee be formed of doctors, social scientists and lawyers to issue guidelines on how the living will would be made and certified as genuine.