What UK’s assisted dying Bill says, how it differs from Indian law

In a landmark decision, the British Parliament last week voted in favour of a new Bill to legalise assisted dying, launching a process to change the law and to usher in one of the biggest social reforms in a generation.

The vote in favour of the Bill kicks off months of further debate and it will now make its way through both House of Commons and the upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords.

The Bill will now be sent to a public bill committee which will vote on any proposed amendments before being voted on again in the House of Commons. It will then be sent to the House of Lords, where further changes could be made, before a final vote is held.

Kim Leadbeater, the Labour lawmaker who introduced the Bill, said she expects the process to take at least six months

The main highlight of the Bill is that it will allow terminally ill patients — those with little to no hope of recovery from fatal illnesses — to request assistance to end their own life.

As per the UK law, only a terminally ill person above the age of 18 and with the mental capacity to make such a decision can request assisted dying. It also says that the patient must be registered, and residing in England or Wales for 12 months before the request.

With UK passing such a law, it remains open for debate as to what the current law is in India where passive euthanasia is the norm and whether the British Parliament voting in favour of such a reform will have any impact on India.

In India, there is already a tendency of sending elderly people to old-age homes and leaving their destiny at the mercy of those people.

In 2018, the Supreme Court of India held that the right to die with dignity formed a part of the right to life with dignity under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, and recognised the legality of 'passive euthanasia'— which literally means the withdrawal of life support from terminally ill patients or patients in a permanent vegetative state.

Passive euthanasia is a common norm in India wherein it allows the patient to die a natural death in the absence of medical interventions, as opposed to the assisted dying Bill which gives patients a more active role in having a say in choosing their time of death.

However, the Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine had sought to modify the euthanasia guidelines and filed a writ petition in the apex court.

Though the court modified the guidelines in 2023, their implementation across the country has been limited.

Euthanasia has its perils. While on one hand families have to go through a patient’s continued suffering with no hope of staying alive, on the other hand comes the vexed issue of whether a person has any right to end his/her own life.

(With Reuters inputs)