Hungarian attorney, and constitutional lawyer Dániel Karsai was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in August 2022, at the age of 46. This incurable disease leads to a gradual deterioration of nerve cells and muscles, with the final stage of complete paralysis and death by suffocation. Meanwhile, the patient’s mind remains clear and alert.

For Karsai, the inability to move and communicate, while his mind remained clear, was a vegetative state devoid of all grace. He wanted to earn the right to end his life with dignity. As he stated, he “would be imprisoned in his own body with no prospect of release except through death,” and his existence would consist almost entirely of pain and suffering. He wished to end, or at least, minimize this phase of his illness by seeking some form of physician-assisted dying.

In Hungary, however, active euthanasia is prohibited by law, which Karsai considered a violation of his basic human rights. He argued that Hungary’s prohibition on end-of-life decision-making violates fundamental human rights; including the right to self-determination originating from human dignity; the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment, and the freedom to choose one’s philosophical beliefs. To enforce these, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which heard his case urgently on 28 November 2023. Furthermore, together with his brother Peter Karsai, they submitted a referendum initiative to legalize euthanasia. The National Electoral Committee rejected the initiative, claiming that the proposed questions were incompatible with the Fundamental Law.

Karsai went public with a series of Facebook posts called ”Post Mortem” on 27 September 2023. He shared his struggle for euthanasia but also his critiques and thoughts on a wide variety of political and everyday topics. His public struggle and legal fight sparked a broad social debate in Hungary on the legalization of euthanasia; the limits of individual self-determination and the moral and legal definition of the right to die.