Abstract:
The 2011 Shanbaug case has proved to be very important in shaping the debates about end-of-life care and assisted dying in India. Ostensibly dealing with the question of whether it was permissible to withdraw treatment from a patient in a persistent vegetative state, it became a case about the legality of passive euthanasia, which is how it was treated by the Law Commission of India in 2012, and by the Supreme Court bench considering the Common Cause case in 2018. However, questions about the legality of passive euthanasia depend on whether we have a coherent definition of \"passive euthanasia\". In this paper, I argue that such a definition was absent from both the Shanbaug and the Common Cause rulings. As a result, they are highly unreliable.
摘要:
事实证明,2011年Shanbaug案对于塑造有关印度临终关怀和协助死亡的辩论非常重要。表面上处理是否允许在持续植物人状态下从患者中退出治疗的问题,它变成了一个关于被动安乐死合法性的案例,这就是印度法律委员会在2012年以及最高法院在2018年考虑共同原因案的处理方式。然而,关于被动安乐死的合法性的问题取决于我们是否对“被动安乐死”有一个连贯的定义。在本文中,我认为,Shanbaug和CommonCause裁定都没有这样的定义。因此,他们非常不可靠。