Even though doctor-assisted suicide is illegal, doctors do help terminally ill patients to die to end their suffering.
This is one of the contentions of Robin Stransham-Ford, an advocate who, from beyond the grave, is continuing his fight for the legal acknowledgement of the right of an irremediably sick person in pain to ask a doctor help him end his life.
Stransham-Ford argued that his helplessness, pain and nausea in his final days of cancer and kidney failure violated his constitutional right to dignity. He died shortly before judgment was given.
On the instructions of his estate, lawyers are defending - in the Supreme Court of Appeal - his call for legal doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill against an opposing action by the Health Professions Council of SA, the Health Department and the justice minister.
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His lawyers point out that suicide is not illegal but getting help to commit it is.
Stransham-Ford's lawyers argue that if doctors withdraw futile treatment or life support that would be the equivalent of helping a patient die at his request.
But the Health Professions Council counters that there is a difference between withdrawing treatment and administering a lethal substance.
The council argues that the High Court usurped the role of the legislature when it changed the law on euthanasia in ruling that applications such as Stransham-Ford's could be considered on a case-by-case basis.
High Court judge Hans Fabricius said the issue would have to be discussed in parliament.
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