Debate on legalising euthanesia needs a closure
Aruna Shanbaug breathed her last on Monday, bringing to an end a torturous 42-year long life as a brain-dead patient. But the debate on euthanasia, which her condition triggered, both in the courts and amongst the public in this country, is alive and kicking. Shanbaug's passing comes four years after the Supreme Court passed a landmark judgement in her case. In response to an appeal for assisted suicide, filed by the patient's friend and lawyer Pinky Virani, the apex court allowed Shanbaug to receive passive euthanasia but ruled out mercy killing. The court ordered that Shanbaug's food and medical treatment be stopped, so that it would eventually lead to her death, but shied away from ordering her immediate release from the effective captivity of her own decaying body, by the administration of either a fatal injection or pill.
This middle-ground judgement, as well as the varied responses it evoked from different quarters, underlined the many complications in the debate on euthanasia, just as Shanbaug's suffering and her life, which almost everybody agrees was worse than death, has been a painful reminder that India can no longer afford to put the issue on the backburner. The extreme conditions of Shanbaug's case — from the brutal rape in 1973 that put her in a hospital bed for the next four decades, to the care she received from her fellow nurses at the KEM Hospital in Mumbai in the years since then — ensured that she made the headlines. But there are many others like her who live lives worse than death but remain chained to their destiny due to legal restrictions and social norms. It is time that India, as a law-abiding, civilised society, take a clear and compassionate view of the situation.
The debate on euthanasia has two important parts — mercy killing, which deals with patients like Shanbaug who are in a permanently vegetative state and incapable of officially deciding whether to end their lives, and assisted suicide, wherein patients who are awake and conscious but in excruciating pain, themselves seek to terminate their lives. In both cases, the basic premise is the same: If every human being has the right to live with dignity, then shouldn't that, by definition, include the right to end a life of indignityIJ The problem here is that even if there is a general consensus that at least a Shanbaug-like life is not worth living, most people — be they doctors, family members or even lawmakers — do not want to play god and decide who gets to die and when. The matter becomes even more complicated when there is even a slight possibility that the patient may come back to life. Finally, there are concerns about the potential abuse of laws relating to mercy killing and assisted suicide, in case euthanasia is legalised. These are all real and difficult issues that require extensive debate and deliberation. But hopefully, at the end of it all, society will be able to ensure that the injustices faced by Aruna Shanbaug are not suffered by anyone else.