This ruling on right to die is a remarkable precedent setter for South Africa and, given how God-fearing our country is, it is bound to stir up emotions. Already the state has said that it will appeal the ruling and that it could “open the floodgates for all other terminal patients who wanted assisted suicide to approach the courts”. This is likely to dominate the news agenda in the weeks to come – and weeks is all Robin Stransham-Ford has left. A fascinating legal issue with a tragic heart. – Gill Moodie
From RDM News Wire
Cape Town advocate Robin Stransham-Ford can ask a doctor to help him die quietly in his bed with his former partner and young daughter with him.
Judge Hans Fabricius morning ruled on Thursday that the doctor who helped him die or provided him with lethal drugs would not face criminal sanction or the threat of losing his medical licence from the Health Professions Council of SA.
The court found Stransham-Ford to be mentally sound and facing a “severely curtailed life” as he expected to die from terminal prostate cancer within weeks or days.
Fabricius also said it was clear that Stransham-Ford had voluntarily approached the court and was under no duress from others to end his life.
Stransham-Ford approached the court last Tuesday with an urgent application that he be allowed to die as he found wasting away from cancer and being in pain “undignified”.
He contended that his constitutional rights to dignity were being breached.
Fabricius ruled that the order only applied to Stransham-Ford and only the doctor who helped him would not be acting unlawfully‚ and no doctor was obliged to help him.
Other terminal patients would have to approach the courts themselves.
Fabricius’s order stated that the Constitutional rights to dignity as well as bodily and psychological integrity were at odds with the law that holds a doctor who helps with assisted suicide guilty of murder or culpable homicide.
Spokesperson for the justice department Mthunzi Mhaga said the state would appeal the ruling on Monday afternoon after the judge had issued his reasons for the order.
He said it was a “precedent-setting ruling that could open the floodgates for all other terminal patients who wanted assisted suicide to approach the courts” and the state was “extremely disappointed” by it.
He complained that the court was curtailing the director of public prosecutions from charging a doctor who gave Stransham-Ford a lethal injection with murder.
Although Fabricius will only give the reasons for his ruling on Monday‚ he made it clear that his ruling did not make the draft law on euthanasia‚ developed in 1998 by the Law Reform Commission‚ legal.
That law was presented to then-health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang‚ but was never taken to parliament to be debated or passed.
It is likely that if the state is given leave to appeal that Stransham-Ford could lose his right to die with the help of a doctor if he does not choose to die this weekend.
Mhaga complained that the order allowed Stransham-Ford to approach a doctor on Thursday and die over the weekend before an appeal could be lodged.
Dignity SA’s Willem Landman praised the ruling as precedent setting.
Pretoria – People suffering from terminal diseases should lawfully be allowed to end their lives in a dignified manner, a member of Dignity SA said on Wednesday ahead of an urgent application before the High Court in Pretoria.
Robert Stransham-Ford, 65, is appearing in court where he will be bringing an urgent application, opposed by Doctors for Life, to be able to legally end his life. He has terminal prostate cancer.
Dignity SA supports his application.
“We really believe South Africa should change its laws. We should have death with dignity. If you speak to people that have been suffering they’ll understand this,” Patsy Schonegevel said.
She began crying as she spoke of her son, Craig.
At the age of 1 Craig was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, commonly known as Elephant Man disease.
By the age of 28 and after years of operations, he told his mother he did not want to carry on living.
The family gave him their blessing to go to Dignitas in Switzerland to die. They paid over R33 000 but were then told he needed to go for more operations.
Craig returned to South Africa and committed suicide in September 2009.
She stood outside the court on Wednesday holding up a poster with Craig’s face on it which read “No one should have to suffer against their wishes”.
Another poster read “An assisted dying law would not result in more people dying but in fewer people suffering”.
TimesLive reported last Tuesday that in court papers, Stransham-Ford had asked that the doctor who assists him be protected from criminal sanction, losing his doctor’s licence or being sued.
Doctors for Life was opposing the application stating that using a lethal injection as is done in the state of Oregon in America could cause violent convulsions and the patient’s family was often asked to leave the room due to the undignified manner in which they respond to the injection.
Stransham-Ford was friends with IFP MP Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, who took his own life in August last year.
“Mario was in the last stages of terminal lung cancer and decided to end his long battle of suffering,” his family said in the statement at the time.
News24
