SC Constitution Bench holds passive euthanasia, living wills

permissible

Right to dignity includes right to refuse treatment and die with dignity.
In a historic decision, the Supreme Court on Friday declared passive euthanasia and
the right of persons, including the terminally ill, to give advance directives to refuse
medical treatment permissible.
A Constitution Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, in three concurring
opinions, upheld that the fundamental right to life and dignity includes right to refuse
treatment and die with dignity.
The fundamental right to a "meaningful existence" includes a person's choice to die
without suffering, it held.
Chief Justice Misra spoke about how societal pressure and fear of criminal liability by
relatives and medical doctors ultimately led to the suffering and the undignified death of
the patient.
The court said it was time to dispense with such shared suffering and sense of guilt and
face the reality. Doctors who attended on the terminally ill were under pressure and
dithered in letting the patient go, apprehending criminal liability and fear of being drawn
into the "vortex" of a possible family struggle for inheritance.
Chief Justice Misra, in a common judgment with Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, said it was
time to "alleviate the agony of an individual" and stand by his right to a dignified
passing. A dignified death should follow a meaningful existence, the five-judge Bench
agreed in a unanimous voice.
Justice A.K. Sikri, in his separate opinion, said though religion, morality, philosophy, law
and society shared equally strong and conflicting opinions about whether right to life
included right to death, they all agreed that a person should die with dignity.
Hence, the court, Justice Sikri said, was rightly in favour of the right to die with dignity.
Justice Sikri said an advance directive or living will from a patient to stop medical
treatment at a particular stage — "particularly when he is brain dead or clinically dead or
not revivable" — quelled apprehensions of future regret for relatives and criminal action
against doctors.
The Chief Justice's judgment includes specific guidelines to test the validity of a living
will, by whom it should be certified, when and how it should come into effect, etc. The
guidelines also cover a situation where there is no living will and how to approach a plea
for passive euthanasia.

HARIBABU VANGAPURI
VR LAW COLLEGE
8374045753
In a separate opinion, Justice Chandrachud observed that modern medical science
should balance its quest to prolong life with need to provide patients quality of life. One
was meaningless without the other, he said.

The issue of death and when to die transcended the boundaries of law, but the court
had intervened because it also concerned the liberty and autonomy of the individual, he
said.

Justice Chandrachud read from his judgment that the sanctity of life included the dignity
and autonomy of the individual. He said the search for a meaningful existence, the
pursuit of happiness included the exercise of free will.

"Free will includes the right of a person to refuse medical treatment," he said.

A person need not give any reasons nor is he answerable to any authority on why he
should write an advanced directive.

But the judge held that active euthanasia is unlawful.

For this reason, he said the reasons given by a two-judge Bench of the Supreme
Court in the Aruna Shanbaug case, allowing passive euthanasia, were "flawed" as
the convoluted procedure to get a go-ahead for passive euthanasia made the dignity of
a dying person dependent on the whims and will of third parties.

"To deprive a person dignity at the end of life is to deprive him of a meaningful
existence," Justice Chandrachud read from his opinion he shared with Justice Ashok
Bhushan.

HARIBABU VANGAPURI
VR LAW COLLEGE
8374045753