Are euthanasia and assisted suicide a crime or a grace? The right to die with cases from Diane Pretty to Sarah Kane

Abstract

The right to life is protected in both international and national legal texts as a prerequisite for all other rights, imposing both positive and negative obligations on the state to safeguard the individual's life. However, modern medical ethics and legal doctrine debate whether the individual's desire to end their life in the face of unbearable suffering implies that this right encompasses a choice not to live. While active euthanasia is considered intentional homicide within the Turkish legal system, the right to refuse treatment under the Regulation on Patient Rights offers a field of evaluation within the context of passive euthanasia. The European Court of Human Rights, in the cases of Diane Pretty and Daniel Karsai, ruled that the right to life does not include a right to die; however, it evaluated the individual's preference to choose the timing of their death under the right to respect for private life (article 8), emphasizing states' margin of appreciation and procedural obligations in this matter. On the other hand, actions carried out without consent by healthcare workers often referred to as "angels of death” are legally certified as direct assaults on the right to life and as murder. The radical psychiatric critique by Thomas Szasz, which characterizes suicide as "Fatal Freedom”, along with Sarah Kane’s depiction of mental anguish in "4.48 Psychosis," expands the clinical boundaries of the subject through debates on ethics and individual autonomy....