Body Searches

Stransham-Ford v Minister of Justice and Correctional Services and Others, held that voluntary active euthanasia and doctor assisted suicide may be legally justified in certain circumstances. The court observed that the distinction between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ voluntary euthanasia is not legally tenable as in both instances the doctors concerned have the ‘actual’ or ‘eventual’ intention to terminate the patient’s life and have caused or hastened the patient’s death. South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeals (SCA) in 2016, overturned a ruling by a lower court granting a terminally ill patient the right to die, thereby upholding South Africa’s laws forbidding assisted suicide. In a ground-breaking ruling in 2015, South Africa’s High Court had granted a terminally ill man, Robin Stransham-Ford, the right to die with dignity by way of euthanasia. However, Stransham-Ford, who was suffering from cancer, died just hours before the High Court ruling was delivered.