“Legal obligation to suffer would be unconstitutional”

The vast majority of people in Germany also reject paternalism when it comes to the last phase of life. The President of the Humanist Association of Germany (HVD), Frieder Otto Wolf, reminded us of this in Berlin on Tuesday. “Prohibitions that undermine the autonomy of people capable of understanding and free will who are suffering from an incurable illness are a policy against human dignity,” Wolf emphasized. Health Minister Hermann Gröhe had previously demanded in the “Rheinische Post” that any commercial assisted suicide should be made a punishable offense. The two major Christian churches have been advocating a legal ban on all “organized”, “commercial”, “institutionalized” and “business-like” assisted suicide for years. In future, doctors who have repeatedly supported terminally ill, suffering people in their right to self-determination out of pure compassion and in compliance with their professional obligations should be punished: these doctors could then be charged with assisted suicide. In contrast to the extreme ban desired by the churches and their representatives in politics, the HVD only advocates regulations that prevent assisted suicide for profit and the advertising of suicide. Prevention and counseling facilities for people with suicidal intentions should be strengthened, and the conditions in care should be improved in order to enable as many people as possible to end their lives with dignity. “But even the best possible care cannot be an argument against the right to self-determination at the end of life,” emphasized Frieder Otto Wolf. What is required to preserve the dignity of a dying person cannot be determined solely by the possibilities of nursing care, medical technology and high-performance medicine. “The person concerned must also want to make use of these options themselves.” Wolf: “A legal obligation to suffer, as the demand for such prohibitions ultimately entails, not only does not correspond to the will of most people in Germany, it would also be unconstitutional and, in principle, incompatible with a liberal attitude. The representatives of the coalition partner of the CDU/CSU parties recognized this wisely in the last legislative period. We hope that the minister actually responsible for such regulations now also recognizes this.”