“From our point of view, what is needed first and foremost is an objectification of the social debate.” This was emphasized by Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany, and Gita Neumann, Head of the Federal Central Office for Advance Directives, in a letter to the negotiators of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the coalition talks with the CDU/CSU. The introduction of a new criminal offense for a ban on assisted suicide planned by the Union parties for 2014 under pressure from the churches does not belong in the future coalition agreement, the federal association made clear to the members of the large negotiating round and other SPD politicians involved in the coalition negotiations this week. The churches in particular have long been working towards a comprehensive ban on assisted suicide, which has so far been exempt from punishment in Germany. A statement issued by the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany last November stated that “not only commercial, i.e. profit-oriented, assisted suicide should be made a punishable offence, but also every form of organized (commercial) assisted suicide”. From a Christian perspective, suicide should be fundamentally rejected, “because life is understood as a gift that we should not dispose of arbitrarily.” The Humanist Association of Germany had repeatedly and decisively contradicted these demands. In a detailed statement to the 622 members of the German Bundestag during the last parliamentary term, Erwin Kress, Vice President of the association, emphasized in February of this year that politicians should not presume to apply the standards of the Christian religion to all people in our country and certainly not to “prevent people who are capable of dying of their own free will and terminate their own lives and seek help in doing so.” At the time, Kress emphasized that the self-determination rights of elderly and seriously chronically ill people who wish to end their lives in a seemingly hopeless situation “must be taken seriously, alternatives must be sought together with them, but they must not be left alone if they are convinced of their wish to end their lives.” Instead of tightening legal regulations, the most urgent tasks to which politicians and society must commit themselves are the removal of taboos surrounding suicide wishes, the promotion of open-ended psychological counselling and suicide prevention, the improvement of conditions in nursing homes and the expansion of palliative care for all. In a letter to the representatives of the SPD in the current coalition negotiations, the Federal Association therefore once again clearly warned against simply narrowing the issues relating to the self-determined and dignified end of life to a prohibition regulation.
The issues surrounding the regulation of assisted suicide were only one “aspect of a much larger overall problem concerning the question of how and whether citizens in our country can have confidence in a self-determined and dignified end of life.” Frieder Otto Wolf and Gita Neumann also explained that the Federal Association had “fond memories of the SPD’s involvement in the parliamentary debates on the legal regulation of living wills, which in our view led to a suitable legal framework.” If the German Bundestag wanted to address the issue of assisted suicide with comparable seriousness, the Federal Association would support this. According to relevant representative surveys (Forsa survey conducted by the DGHS in August 2012), 77% of the population are in favor of doctors being allowed to help seriously ill and suffering people to end their lives in a self-determined and dignified manner. The results of a survey conducted by the Infratest opinion research institute in December 2012 revealed that one in two people would rather make use of assisted suicide than become a care case. In the view of the Humanist Association of Germany, the framework for action is therefore clear: “Autonomy, self-determined freedom of choice even at the end of life, is a valuable asset for people. It is the task of politicians to protect this legal right and not to undermine it. It is also a high-ranking task of politics to protect the right to a dignified life, especially at the end of life.”
