A rights-based approach to physician assisted-suicide in South Africa: towards realizing the <i>‘right to die’</i>

Abstract The Constitution protects everyone’s right to life. However, often people become so ill that they desire to terminate their lives to alleviate pain and suffering, through the assistance of medical practitioners. This is known as physician-assisted suicide (PAS), which is currently criminalized in South Africa, and viewed as a violation of the right to life. This article argues that as much as everyone has the right to life, a person’s right to die should be recognized, and incorporated into the legal framework to preserve a person’s dignity. This is predicated on the fact that when a person is terminally ill, their rights to dignity, privacy, and freedom are adversely impaired, equally needing protection. Hence, a person’s autonomous decision-making should permit them to request assistance to die, and such assistance should not constitute murder or culpable homicide. To give full effect to the Constitution’s dignity-orientated rights-based transformative agenda, the judicial interpretation of the law in Suzanne Walter and Others v Minister of Health and Others should result in the decriminalization of PAS. It is argued that in instances of endless palliative care, with no hope of life, consent to be assisted with death should be considered a legitimate constitutional entitlement.