The quiet battle over the right to dying with dignity

In October 2014, Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old Californian, wrote an essay for CNN.com that shook the world. Maynard had been diagnosed with a painful and terminal brain cancer. She learned the painful side effects of the “treatment”, with no chance of survival beyond six months. She concluded that “death with dignity” was the best option for both her and her family. However, California did not allow medical assistance in dying or physician-assisted suicide — it became legal in June 2016 (the California End of Life Option Act). Maynard and her husband moved to Oregon, one of the five states that allowed for this at that time (Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act). Maynard wrote the article before she died, titled ‘My right to death with dignity at 29’. She wrote: “I do not want to die. But I am dying. And I want to die on my own terms.” She became the new poster child for the “death with dignity” movement.

The case of Aruna Shanbaug

In India, there was a lot of discussion about the tragic case of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at the King Edward Memorial Hospital, Parel, Mumbai. She was attacked and sexually assaulted by a janitor in the hospital, in 1973, which left her in a vegetative state for nearly 40 years. A petition for euthanasia, or painless death, had been filed before the Supreme Court of India on her behalf. Shanbaug died in 2015. She became the template for the “right to die” in India.

In a historic judgment in 2011, the Court had suggested that the particular section under the then-IPC be reviewed and abolished. In 2018, a Constitution Bench of the Court declared the right to die with dignity as a fundamental right and had fully legalised the withdrawal or the withholding of medical treatment. Safety measures had been put in place. The right to make a “living will” in case a person later developed a terminal illness had also been granted by the Court. The Bench asked: “When the sanctity of life is destroyed, should we not allow them to cross the door and meet death with dignity?”

Eight years later, on March 11, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court passed a historic ruling allowing 32-year-old Harish Rana, who had been in a coma after a fall 13 years ago, to pass away. This is the first instance of court-ordered withdrawal or the withholding of medical treatment in India. In cases where a patient’s life is being artificially sustained through feeding tubes, certain aspects of the application of the withdrawal or the withholding of medical treatment are explained in this ruling.

The evolution in Europe

Mr. Rana can certainly die because Aruna Shanbaug lived. Similarly, the debate on assisted dying in Europe was also initiated by a doctor, a sailor, and a lecturer. The Netherlands was compelled to review its death options after a rural doctor named Truus Postma was charged with administering a 200 mg dose of morphine to her terminally-ill mother in 1973. The country became the first in the world to legalise euthanasia in 2002. Today, it boasts of some of the most liberal laws regarding euthanasia.

Ramón Sampedro, a charismatic Spanish sailor, had pleaded with the courts to allow him to die after a diving accident had left him paraplegic from neck down at 25. He asked his friends for help in consuming a potassium cyanide mixture after his appeals were turned down. Sampedro, said, “When I have drunk this, I will have renounced one of the worst kinds of slavery, that of being a living head glued to a dead body.” Javier Bardem played the character of Sampedro in the 2004 Academy Award-winning film, The Sea Inside.

In 2013, Marie Fleming, an Irish university lecturer suffering from multiple sclerosis, asked the Supreme Court in Ireland for the right to assisted death. Although she failed, she attracted significant public attention. Ten years later, an Irish parliamentary committee proposed legislation.

While euthanasia is becoming increasingly embraced in society, has this “special thing” actually become common? Well, everyone in the Netherlands seems to have known someone who has been euthanised; however, that may not be the case yet. But disputes and arguments come up. For example, Zoraya ter Beek, a 29-year-old Dutch woman with chronic depression, anxiety, trauma, and personality disorder, was granted assisted dying in 2024. This case sparked a discussion throughout Europe.

At the crossroads

British philosopher and author Kathleen Stock tackles one of today’s biggest controversies in her latest book, Do Not Go Gentle, whose title is inspired by a 1951 Dylan Thomas poem in which the poet implores his ailing father not to accept death without a fight. Stock believes there will be special requests and lobbying for extensions right after the guidelines and procedures for assisted dying are set. For example, Medical Assistance in Dying, which has been available in Canada since June 2016 for people with a “reasonably foreseeable” natural death, has since been expanded to include serious, incurable, but not necessarily terminal diagnoses. Moreover, laws for people whose underlying condition is a mental illness have been passed and will come into effect in 2027.

Australian author and singer Nick Cave said, “Do Not Go Gentle is a bracing, often chilling wrestle with the ethical dilemmas surrounding the assisted death service.” Brittany Maynard, on the other hand, wrote, “My question is, who has the right to tell me that I don’t deserve this choice? That I deserve to suffer for weeks or months in tremendous amounts of physical and emotional pain? Why should anyone have the right to make that choice for me?” Thus, the moral conundrum would continue to plague civilisation.

The Bench in the Harish Rana case asked the Centre to consider enacting a comprehensive law on end-of-life decisions and the withdrawal or the withholding of medical treatment in India. As elsewhere, if we need to redefine the domain again in the future, it might always be a delicate call between the right to die with dignity and ‘Do Not Go Gentle’.

Atanu Biswas is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata

Published – March 17, 2026 04:06 pm IST