The draft bill by the group of MPs led by Lars Castellucci, Ansgar Heveling and others aims to reintroduce an all-encompassing criminal law provision in Section 217 of the German Criminal Code (StGB) to protect life and supposedly genuine autonomy. This is ideally supported above all by the churches, the German Hospice and Palliative Association and psychiatric professional associations. On the other hand, criminal lawyers invited as experts warn of the danger that a criminal law provision on assisted suicide will once again fail to achieve the effective availability of safe support for suicide that is now required under constitutional law. This is because this highly repressive draft overburdens those willing to commit suicide with a maximum procedure which – due to two psychiatric consultations alone – cannot even be adhered to within the specified time frame, but which is necessary according to this draft law in order to exempt persons willing to help from illegality, contrary to the prohibition in principle.
“How can it be,” asks Gita Neumann, the Federal Representative of the Humanist Association for Medical Ethics, “that so many MPs, including five ministers from the traffic light coalition, have already co-signed the draft by Castellucci/Heveling and others? The solution to the riddle is the strategic diversionary maneuver that a separate motion on the priority of suicide prevention was submitted at the same time. Who would see through such a moralistic junket as a strategy for waving through new criminal liability?” Criminal law expert Prof. Karsten Gaede puts it in a nutshell in his written statement for the hearing. He considers the concerns of the Castellucci/Heveling group to be not only questionable, but also inconsistent: “While the members of parliament rightly demand in the prevention motion to promote suicide prevention by removing taboos and destigmatizing suicidal thoughts, they are doing this concern a disservice with the comprehensive risk of criminal liability deliberately designed to deter.”
For the Humanist Association of Germany, it is about all people, whether they initially have only perhaps passing thoughts of wanting to be dead or are already harboring serious suicidal intentions. The HVD therefore favors the draft law by Katrin Helling-Plahr, Helge Lindh and others, who consistently do without any sanctions. Instead, they propose nationwide, open-ended counseling services in which interdisciplinary teams offer discussions and client-centered information. “It is in line with our decades of experience with suicidal crises and requests for assisted suicide,” explains Neumann, “that people cannot be divided from the outset into groups of physically ill people who are capable of committing suicide and everyone else, but that suicide prevention and assistance go hand in hand in each specific case.”
The Humanist Association of Germany calls on the members of the German Bundestag not to follow the diversionary maneuver with the separate motion on suicide prevention. A similar approach had already been taken in 2015 when Section 217 of the German Criminal Code, which was overturned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2020, was passed, when its supporters at the time coupled their bill with a law to promote palliative and hospice care. “Nobody could have objected to that in 2015 either,” says Neumann. “This time, however, the MPs should be more vigilant and have learned something new.”
