The Limits of Assisted Suicide

This is an issue two decades away for India but will at some point be­come imperative—what is the bound­ary for the right to die that an enlight­ened state must draw? The question has highlighted itself after The Free Press, an American online media venture, ran an article about a 28-year-old Dutch woman who was physically completely fine but has decided to go in for assisted suicide, as laws in the Netherlands permit, because her mental issues have turned out to be unmanageable. She is functional, has a partner who she lives with and has yet been allowed to go ahead with it by the government there and even a date has been fixed. It has led to an online debate with many arguing that this is something that no country should encourage because there is no terminal or incurable disease that makes death inevitable anyway.

There might be some merit to it too. Assuming that the mental ailment has no treatment now, it is eminently possible that in a few years one could present itself and then the death would have been in vain. On the other hand, there is that tru­ism facing humanity in its face ever since its beginning—that a human being’s life is his own to do as he or she pleases. And if that includes killing themselves even at the peak of one’s health, then that is something for the person to settle with his near and dear ones. The state should keep away from it. Or at the most, once it is certain about the intention, try to make it as easy as possible.

No country takes it that far. Even those like the Netherlands, which permit assisted suicide, have strong processes to ensure that only extreme­ly necessary cases get the go-ahead. It is somewhat strange that death is the single most important and frightening inevitability of life and, yet, societ­ies bend over backwards to not pay enough attention to how it should happen. Death is usually accompanied by pain and vast resources are ex­pended in managing that pain, but not on dying itself. It is assumed that once that Pandora’s Box is thrown open, vast numbers would simply choose to just die. But the problem here is not that people will seek death but that they will do so impulsively. Human beings are programmed to want to live and any considered decision about taking one’s own life will have to surmount hurdles hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have created. There is also religion, which puts a premium on life and gives meaning to it, sometimes very paradoxically by creating beautiful afterlives.

It is not easy for anyone to choose death and that should itself be a reason for society to not shirk paying attention to it. There should be safeguards against impulsivity, by having large timeframes, from when first intent is expressed to an actual decision. There needs to be psychiatric monitoring. But in the end, a good society’s role is to make the quality of life better and not the blind preservation of it.

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