SACHS J [56] “[T]he timing of death – once solely a matter of fate – is now increasingly becoming a matter of human choice.”10 In the United States, eighty percent of the two million people who die each year, die in hospitals and long term care institutions, and approximately seventy percent of those after a decision to forego life sustaining treatment has been made.11 The words of Brennan J of the US Supreme Court, writing in a different context, have resonance: “Nearly every death involves a decision whether to undertake some medical procedure that could prolong the process of dying. Such decisions are difficult and personal. They must be made on the basis of individual values, informed by medical realities, yet within a framework governed by law. The role of the courts is confined to defining that framework, delineating the ways in which government may and may not participate in such decisions.”12 (My emphasis.) [57] However the right to life may come to be defined in South Africa, there is in reality no meaningful way in which it can constitutionally be extended to encompass the right indefinitely to evade death. As Stevens J put it: dying is part of life, its completion rather than its opposite.13 We can, however, influence the manner in which we come to 10 Office of Technology Assessment Task Force, Life Sustaining Technologies and the Elderly 41 (1988), quoted by Brennan J (dissenting) in Cruzan v Director, Missouri Department of Health, et al 497 US 261, 302 (1990). That case involved terminating rather than having access to expensive equipment. 11 Id at 302–3. 12 Id at 303. 13 Id at 343. 32