“Fundamental human rights must not be undermined even at the end of life,” emphasized Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany (HVD), on Wednesday evening in Berlin on the occasion of the ongoing debate on the legal ban on assisted suicide.
The Council of the Protestant Church in Germany had previously spoken out in favour of rejecting all organized assisted suicide. According to the Council, all forms of organized or commercial assisted suicide should be made a punishable offence. At the end of November, the German Bundestag plans to discuss a “draft law on the criminalization of the commercial promotion of suicide” (Drs. 17/11126).
Wolf emphasized that it is a fundamental right of Christians to personally reject suicide and assisted suicide. However, non-denominational, humanistically-minded people and people of other faiths should oppose laws that abolish the right and opportunity to make one’s own decision in this area of life through such religiously-developed moral concepts.
“From a humanist perspective, the right to self-determination and the prudent wishes of suffering, terminally ill people must be respected at all costs. Laws that prevent this undermine the goal of preserving people’s dignity. Moralistic viewpoints that do not show sufficient respect here also lack an understanding of the ideologically neutral constitutional state.”
Although assisted suicide is clearly excluded as a field of work for the humanists working in the association: “In our own work, we support and ensure empathetic support and promote awareness of the value of every human life,” Wolf emphasized here.
However, it must not be allowed that all those people in Germany who have opted for an offer that includes assisted or assisted suicide for suffering, terminally ill people out of honest motives that are committed to preserving human dignity are denied the right to make this decision.
“Non-denominational and also religious people should not accept that the rights of dying people are arbitrarily restricted by state bans created in a religiously and morally invasive manner, which also aim to criminalize honest offers of assisted suicide created out of fair motives. This will only exacerbate already deeply tragic life situations.”
Frieder Otto Wolf pointed out that many suicides carried out out of desperation could be prevented by reducing prohibitions. “It would help save lives if the topic of suicide were not so taboo. The approval of assisted suicide services has prophylactic effects,” Wolf reminded the audience.
Any offer of assisted suicide based on interests in financial profit, on the other hand, should be clearly rejected and should be prohibited, as should commercial and profit-oriented advertising for suicide or assisted suicide.
Even for “truly free-thinking Christians”, there are good arguments to oppose the comprehensive bans called for by the Council of the Protestant Church, “and also to question the present draft regulation of the Federal Government very critically, as it does not safeguard the human right to a self-determined and dignified end of life.”
Finally, Frieder Otto Wolf called on humanists to make use of the traditions and contemporary offerings of practical humanism, which provide a rich store of thoughts and attitudes on a conscious and mindful approach to death and dying in one’s own life, in order to deal with questions about the end of one’s own life and that of loved ones.
This is the only way to develop considered and prudent attitudes to dealing with suffering and death. “We all encounter illness, suffering and the end of life, whether in our personal existence or in the form of others. If we demand that our needs and those of our loved ones are respected at the end of life, we must first begin to respect them as such ourselves and make this clear in our conversations with each other and in public.”
Further information:
On June 16, 2012, the Federal Main Committee of the Humanist Association of Germany passed a resolution in which the association took a detailed position on the creation of a new criminal offence in Section 217e of the German Criminal Code, which criminalizes the commercial promotion of suicide: Self-determination in the termination of life
