Right to die, in peace
For years, the name Aruna Shanbaug was India’s most painful reminder of a question we did not know how to answer. A young nurse in Mumbai, brutally assaulted in 1973, spent over four decades alive, but not, in any ordinary sense, living. Her case forced India to ask an uncomfortable question: when medicine can keep the body going, but cannot restore life as we understand it, must suffering be prolonged, or does a person have the right to refuse such prolongation?
Supreme Court’s answer was that though a person has no right to die by taking their own life, they have the right to refuse medical treatment and hasten death, known as passive euthanasia.
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