Towards the end of his life, Archbishop Desmond Tutu began a new campaign in support of the assisted dying movement – a hugely sensitive subject in his Anglican Church.
“I have prepared for my death and have made it clear that I do not wish to be kept alive at all costs,” said The Arch in an opinion piece in The Washington Post in 2016.
At the time he was in and out of hospital for a recurring infection linked to prostate cancer, an illness he was diagnosed with in 1997.
“Dying people should have the right to choose how and when they leave Mother Earth,” he wrote.
It remains that only a handful of countries allow a form of voluntary euthanasia, where a doctor helps the patient to die or assisted dying, where a terminally ill individual ends their own lives by choice or consent.
In South Africa euthanasia is a crime punishable by 14 years in jail, although such a sentence has never been handed down.
Last year the Supreme Court of Appeal blocked a bid by a man with prostate cancer to secure the right to medically assisted death, which could have opened the way to legalise voluntary euthanasia.
“I would not mind,” said Desmond Tutu on the issue of assisted dying.
The Anglican Church in South Africa refused to comment on the issue when contacted by AFP.
Sean Davison, the director of assisted dying campaign group Dignity South Africa, told AFP: “When Tutu speaks, the world listens… Maybe this is something we should be talking about rather than closing the discussion completely.”
The debate around assisted dying will continue to rage after Tutu’s death.
Tutu famously echoed these words; “Now, as I turn 85 Friday, with my life closer to its end than its beginning, I wish to help give people dignity in dying. Just as I have argued firmly for compassion and fairness in life, I believe that terminally ill people should be treated with the same compassion and fairness when it comes to their deaths. Dying people should have the right to choose how and when they leave Mother Earth. I believe that, alongside the wonderful palliative care that exists, their choices should include a dignified assisted death.”
(DIGNITY IN DYING AND COMPASSION & CHOICES)
Sources: News24, eNCA, The Washington Post
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