- Dignity SA is asking the High Court to recognise a legal right to medical assistance in dying.
- The application challenges a law that criminalises doctors who help their patients die.
- The case seeks to open space for Parliament to regulate assisted dying within 24 months.
South African law does not permit medical assistance in dying. That is the position Dignity SA has placed before the High Court in Pretoria, asking the court to declare that this position is unconstitutional and cannot continue.
Dignity SA filed its application on 9 April 2026. It asks the court to declare that the common law prohibition on medical assistance in dying is unconstitutional and invalid, and to suspend that declaration for 24 months to allow Parliament to create a lawful framework.
What Dignity SA is asking the court to recognise
Dignity SA seeks recognition that a competent and informed person who is living with a terminal or irremediable condition, and whose suffering is unbearable, may request medical assistance in dying.
The application states that the current law does not permit this, even where a competent and informed patient makes such a request voluntarily and with full understanding of what they are asking for. The application asks the court to declare that this position is inconsistent with the Constitution.
The application notes that South African law allows a patient to refuse life-sustaining treatment or to ask for it to be withdrawn, even knowing that decision will lead to their death.
Yet a doctor who helps a patient die, even at that patient’s explicit request, may be found guilty of murder. The application describes this as a blanket prohibition, one that draws a hard line and offers no room for compassion or context.
What this means for patients
The founding affidavit includes accounts of people who faced terminal or degenerative illness without any access to medical assistance in dying.
These are not abstract scenarios. They are the stories of real people who were unable to get help to end their lives and who, in desperation, took matters into their own hands, often in traumatic and undignified circumstances.
Why doctors are part of the case
The application makes clear that a healthcare practitioner who helps a patient die may face criminal prosecution and professional sanction, even where that help was given at the patient’s own request.
This puts doctors in an impossible position. They are trained to relieve suffering, yet the law treats an act of compassion at a patient’s request as a potential murder.
The constitutional question the court must decide
Dignity SA challenges the prohibition on the basis that it cuts across fundamental constitutional rights, including the rights to dignity, equality, freedom and security of the person, and life itself.
The application asks the court to determine whether a law that denies dying people any choice over how they go can truly be consistent with a Constitution built on human dignity.
What happens if the challenge succeeds
Dignity SA asks that any declaration of invalidity be suspended for 24 months to give Parliament time to enact legislation that properly regulates medical assistance in dying.
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