The right to die spreads to Germany
“Progressive! Individuals have a right to ‘self-determined’ suicide, including the freedom to take one's own life and to enlist support provided by third parties. German court rules assisted suicide ban violates citizens' rights to determine their own death.”
This was tweeted by Philip Nitschke, Australia’s indefatigable campaigner for an unfettered right to die. It was a good summary of a decision by the German Federal Constitutional Court on Wednesday, which declared that banning assisted suicide was against Germany’s ‘Basic Law’.
From now on people will be free to seek commercial assistance to help them die. (At least doctors won’t be co-opted, for the moment.) This opens up all sorts of business opportunities. Will there be death doulas in every funeral home? Watch this space.
Michael Cook
Unconstitutional, says Federal Constitutional Court
1582546980
- How long can you put off seeing the doctor because of lockdowns? - December 3, 2021
- House of Lords debates assisted suicide—again - October 28, 2021
- Spanish government tries to restrict conscientious objection - October 28, 2021
More Stories
Australian woman freed after 20 years after new genetic evidence raised ‘reasonable doubt’
An Australian woman who spent 20 years in jail for murdering her four infant children has been pardoned on the...
Is surrogacy a way of combatting ‘compulsory familialism’?
For people on either side of the debate, surrogacy can seem like a black-and-white issue. Opponents stress human dignity; supporters...
The FDA finally approved Elon Musk’s Neuralink chip for human trials. Have all the concerns been addressed?
Since its founding in 2016, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink has had the ambitious mission to build a next-generation brain...
You shed DNA everywhere you go – trace samples in the water, sand and air are enough to identify who you are, raising ethical questions about privacy
Human DNA can be sequenced from small amounts of water, sand and air in the environment to potentially extract identifiable...
Are Dutch doctors too willing to euthanise people with autism and intellectual disability?
Will legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide lead to unnecessary deaths because of an able-ist bias against intellectual disability and autism?...
Euthanasia in Quebec: seamless service at a friendly funeral parlour
In Quebec, the number of cases of euthanasia has risen from 63 in 2015-2016 to 3663 in 2021-2022. Nowadays many...