A Year after SC verdict on right to living will, 73% Indians are unaware

A survey of more than 2,400 urban Indian respondents has found that while 88% of respondents wanted to decide their line of medical treatment during the last days of their life.

Business Standard : On March 9, 2018, a Supreme Court of India judgment declared “the right to a dignified life upto the point of death including a dignified procedure of death” to be a fundamental right enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution.

By recognising that “an adult human being having mental capacity to take an informed decision has right to refuse medical treatment including withdrawal from life-saving devices”, the court enabled Indians to create an advance medical directive, or a living will, containing a person’s wishes regarding their end-of-life medical treatment should they lose their capacity to take decisions or convey their wishes.

A year after the judgement, a survey of more than 2,400 urban Indian respondents has found that while 88% of respondents wanted to decide their line of medical treatment during the last days of their life, only 27% were aware of the concept of a living will and only 6% of these had actually created a living will.

The Living Wiell Survey was conducted by healthcare service provider HealthCare at HOME (HCAH) across seven cities--Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh and Jaipur--with a sample size of 350 to 400 per region. There were an equal number of male and female respondents, who had been hospitalised for more than a day in the past year.

About 85% of the respondents said they wished to cause the least mental and financial trouble to their family during their last days, the survey found. Yet, 74% of respondents had never given any serious thought to dying and had not secured their family financially in case of their death, while 26% of respondents had.

Of the four age cohorts that the respondents were equally divided--25-35 years, 36-50 years, 51-60 years and 60+ years--senior citizens (60+) had the highest percentage (94%) of people wishing to cause the least trouble to their family members during their last days. Yet, only 80% of people in this age group--the least amongst all age groups--wanted to decide their treatment line during the last days of their life.

In the age group of 25-35 years, 97% of respondents wanted independence of choice of treatment line, the highest among all age groups.

In the 25-35 years age group, 36% of respondents were aware of the concept of a living will, with this age group showing the maximum awareness. Only 21% people in the age group of 51-60 years knew about living wills, making this group the least aware.

Among respondents who were aware of living wills, 17% of those aged 60+ had a living will, while less than 1% in the age group of 36-50 years and none in the age group 25-35 years had one.

How the SC judgement on Section 377 ties constitutional values with emotion

Supreme Court's decision to decriminalise homosexuality is incredibly heartfelt and vindicates the dignity of LGBT people.

What does it mean to love in law? On Thursday 6th September, my social media feeds lit up with heart emojis, #lovewins hashtags, and status updates expressing love in response to the Supreme Court of India’s unanimous decision to decriminalise gay sex. There was a collective sigh of relief as the court lifted the weight of criminality from those who lived in the shadow of India’s law criminalising homosexuality, specifically section 377 of the Indian Penal Code 1860 – a vestige of British colonialism.

Section 377 criminalises “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”. Broadly drafted, the law codifies Victorian morality to criminalise a range of consensual and non-consensual (“unnatural”) sexual behaviours, including homosexuality, bestiality, paedophilia, and rape. While very few people were prosecuted for same-sex sexual activity under the criminal law, it left sexual minorities vulnerable to extortion, harassment, and abuse. Thursday’s decision means that gay sex is now excluded from its reach.

In 2001, the Naz Foundation, an organisation working to end HIV/AIDS, petitioned the courts to “read down” the law to exclude consensual sexual activity between adults. The Delhi High Court agreed and held that criminalising gay sex violated rights to equality (Article 14) and privacy/liberty (Article 21) guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. However, the Supreme Court overruled this decision in 2013, holding that only parliament could change the law.

ALSO READ: Section 377 read down: When lovers of liberty rose to the occasion

This protracted litigation history culminated last Thursday when a newly constituted bench of the Indian Supreme Court repudiated their previous decision and decriminalised gay sex. And it did so with an endearing emotional depth.

Loving jurisprudence

Spanning almost 500 pages, the court’s jurisprudence is a valentine to India’s LGBT community. The court’s four judgments (from five justices) tie expansive constitutional values of inclusion, democracy, and dignity to emotional claims about compassion, respect, empathy, hope, and love.

Chief Justice Dipak Misra observed that punitive laws eroded the “right to choose without fear” a partner and realise “a basic right to companionship”. Citing one of the court’s prior decisions about privacy, he noted: …Read More

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