The Humanist Association of Germany (HVD) considers today’s debate in the Bundestag on the new regulation of assisted suicide to be urgently needed. Following the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling in February 2020, organized assisted suicide is once again possible. Several organizations offer this for their members. On the other hand, an overwhelming majority of doctors do not know whether and how they can assist their patients in ending their lives if they wish. Some state medical associations still prohibit this. What remains unregulated for the unsettled medical profession is which due diligence criteria are to be observed when assessing the patient’s capacity and the seriousness of their wish for assisted suicide. The drug sodium pentobarbital, which is highly suitable for this purpose, has still not been approved.
According to the grounds of the ruling, in our country, too, there can only be self-determination over one’s own death and the liberalization of assistance in this regard. The HVD therefore welcomes the legislative initiative of the members of the Bundestag Katrin Helling-Plahr (FDP), Dr. Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and Dr. Petra Sitte (Die Linke). This no longer contains a criminal offense, but does include the establishment of independent counseling centers, as proposed by the Humanist Association of Germany.
The Federal Constitutional Court also recommended or called for a revision of the professional law for doctors and pharmacists and a revision of the law on narcotics. The 124th German Medical Assembly will address the challenges for doctors described above at the beginning of May 2021. The medical profession will certainly be following the debate in the Bundestag closely. “The members of parliament should not once again engage in a debate on the criminalization of assisted suicide,” explains Erwin Kress, spokesperson for the board of the HVD Bundesverband. “They should finally take the will of a large majority of the population seriously. People want to be helped in an emergency if they want to end their lives for good and understandable reasons.”
A year ago, the Humanist Association of Germany had already presented a draft for a “Law on the Management of Assisted Suicide and Suicide Conflicts”. The draft law can be found here.
