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The right to die includes the right to live.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court of India delivered a landmark judgment which legalized euthanasia for humans after a 24 years long battle. Euthanasia is classified into two categories - "Active" & "Passive". Of these, only passive euthanasia is legalized.
Active Euthanasia:
This involves forced killing of an individual by administering some lethal poison or some other such fatal methods.Passive Euthnasia:
This involves withholding of medical treatment for continuation of life from a patient who is in permanent vegetative state e.g. withdrawing of life support system from a patient. Thus a patient can embrace death in a natural way.I applaud this decision of legalizing passive euthnasia. It should have been done long back.
The discussion over willful euthanasia had started when a nurse named Aruna Shanbaug approached courts for granting her death but she was not granted. She died in 2015 after surviving for 42 years in a vegetative state in the hospital.
In recent times, medical treatment cost for indoor and ICU patients have sky-rocketed. Most people had to spend all their life savings when one of their family members had to be taken to a hospital. Some families even get into a huge debt trap in order to pay huge medical bills. But at the end they only get a dead body out of the hospital.
It’s not only about money, the patient too hang on his/ her life without even experiencing it. Some people just suffer unnecessarily in ICUs even when all hope is lost. Today’s medical science can keep a patient alive almost indefinitely …as long as the patient is kept on life support systems. But that life is worse than hell. I’d rather prefer to die than spending my time in a hospital and wait to die on my bed at some later date.
Is there any benefit in keeping a brain-dead patient alive in a false hope of his/her resurrection? Yes, we do know that there has been several cases when doctors have stated that there is no hope for the patient or even at times declared him / her dead. But the patient sprung to life after taking back home. Such thin hopes probably keep family members to cling on to treatment until the last moment.
Court doesn’t consider a vegetative life as a dignified life. In its 538 pages long judgment, it used the word “dignity” 473 times. In the judgment, court also cited some religious references regarding euthanasia.
Hippocratic Oath of medical practitioners “not to give a lethal drug to anyone nor to advise such a plan” was contradicted by various religion and philosophers. Almost contemporary Greek philosopher Plato did not support medical treatment to critically ill patients.
In “The Republic”, Pluto writes:
“But if a man had a sickly constitution and intemperate habits, his life was worth nothing to himself or to anyone else; medicine was not meant for such people and they should not be treated, though they might be richer than Midas.”
Theistic religions like Christianity, Islam and Hinduism are not in favour of euthanasia.
Bible says a human body is like a temple and you are not allowed to defile it as God resides there. The Hindu religion also states life as a gift of God and no one else has right to take it away except God. Islam too say similar things that life and death depends on Allah’s will and humans are prohibited to go against it.
In ancient Indian religion, realized yogi could discard their mortal body through the process of higher spiritual practices, termed as Samadhi. And this was revered by the society.
But atheistic religions li8ke Buddhism & Jainism favour euthanasia. In fact, Jainism has an established ritual called Santhara or Sanlekhna where any person in his conscience can take a vow unto death.
Buddhism also states that Lord Buddha has permitted death for critically ill person as an act of compassion.
Thus concept of euthanasia isn’t very new to India. But it’s now that it has been legalized.
All these days, there was a lot of debate and petitions & couter-petitions in courts to term the Jain Sanlekhna practice as suicide. Probably this decision will help a little to their favour.