‘Right to die Bill’ to be introduced in parliament
Congress of the People (COPE) MP Deidre Carter has announced plans to introduce the National Health Amendment Bill (2018) to Parliament.
According to a report by TimesLive, Carter said that the Bill will explicitly allow for living wills to be recognised and allow for terminally ill patients to refuse medical treatment that could prolong their lives.
Speaking to parliamentary journalists on Monday, she added that while the National Health Act provides for the right of a user to refuse health services and that a health service may not be provided to a user without the user’s informed consent‚ it is still ambiguous and health professionals were uncertain and feared adverse legal consequences.
DignitySA’s Willem Landman, who helped draft the bill, explained that the living will and durable power of attorney for healthcare are two instruments that enable a patient to make certain decisions when life is no longer worth living.
A living will is a legal document in which a person specifies what actions should be taken for their health if they are no longer able to make decisions for themselves because of illness or incapacity. This is drafted while they still have capacity to make decisions for themselves.
A power of attorney gives someone else power to make decisions on the patient’s behalf should the patient become incompetent to make those decisions.
“Any competent person may foresee the possibility of becoming incompetent when they enter the terminal phase of the dying process, and may wish to control their healthcare decision-making as they are able to do when they are competent,” the drafters of the bill said.
“Advance health care directives are designed to enable competent persons to express their preferences and give instructions about such possible future situations.
“The National Health Act does to an extent contain provisions about advance health care directives in that in one provision of the Act, a ‘living will’ is inferred and in another, provision is made for the appointment of a substitute healthcare decisionmaker,” it states.
The National Health Amendment Bill will therefore provide for legal recognition, legal certainty and legal enforceability of advance health care directives such as the living will and the durable power of attorney for healthcare.
The bill will:
- Provide for and clarify the legal status of two types of advance health care directives: a ‘living will’ and a ‘durable power of attorney for healthcare’;
- Set out the purpose, scope and format for these advance health care directives and provide for the resolution of disputes related to these directives;
- Clarify whether a living will or a substitute decision-maker’s decision may be overridden by a medical practitioner or family members in any circumstances; and
- Clarify whether someone acting upon these directives is immune from criminal and civil prosecutions.
Interested parties and institutions have been invited to submit written representations on the proposed content of the draft bill to the Speaker of the National Assembly.
You can find more details here.
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