Freedom and dignity, in life and in death

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

Professor Sean Davison returned to South Africa in mid-December last year, after the New Zealand high court revised his bail conditions and allowed him to return to his family and to his job at the University of the Western Cape. He is currently awaiting trial in a case of attempted murder, after he gave his mother a lethal dose of morphine four years ago, at her request.

His mother, Patricia, had been terminally ill from a cancer diagnosed in 2004, and no longer thought life worth living. She had tried and failed to starve herself to death, and eventually resorted to asking her son to kill her. But voluntary euthanasia is illegal in New Zealand, as it is in South Africa. It’s time for that to change,