General criminalization is unacceptable

“We can only agree with certain aspects of this initiative,” said Gita Neumann, head of the Federal Central Office for Advance Directives and spokesperson for the German Humanist Association on the subject of autonomy at the end of life, on Tuesday afternoon in Berlin. She has very mixed feelings about the draft law presented today in Munich. On the one hand, it is “an important step towards special medical suicide assistance, but on the other hand, the general criminalization of assisted suicide that it presupposes is unacceptable.” The regulatory proposals now presented were penned by four scientists, the palliative care physician Gian Domenico Borasio, the medical law expert Jochen Taupitz and the two doctors and medical ethicists Ralf J. Jox and Urban Wiesing. Gita Neumann also criticizes the fact that the proposed regulation is aimed exclusively at assisted suicide by doctors and provides for very restrictive conditions. The draft is based on the model of some US states, where assisted suicide is otherwise prohibited. “The draft reflects a paradox of the German debate: something is to be expressly permitted that is not prohibited in Germany, namely assisted suicide by a doctor, and something is to be prohibited that has been permitted in Germany up to now, namely assisted suicide by anyone,” explained Neumann. She emphasized: “Regulations are needed that also include suicide counseling by non-profit organizations. A combination of the Swiss and US models would make the most sense. In any case, we firmly reject a new criminalization – as provided for in the draft law. The proposed three-year prison sentence would also explicitly affect a physician assisting suicide whose patient who wishes to die is not terminally ill, but is suffering from agonizing chronic old-age complaints, for example.” “We are defending ourselves against a mood in politics and in the medical profession that absolutely wants to see something banned that was previously permitted,” says Neumann. Gita Neumann went on to say that the frequently invoked dam break can only be countered with better suicide prevention. This would significantly reduce the demand for allegedly highly problematic assisted suicide associations. Neumann expressed her agreement with the scientists’ draft on two points: the criminalization of assisted suicide for children and the ban on offensive commercial advertising. The Humanist Association of Germany had already submitted a concrete proposal for regulation in 2012 and presented it to the then Federal Minister of Justice.