Germany reopens painful debate on assisted suicide

BERLIN: Germany’s highest court will begin hearing a case brought by terminally ill patients and doctors against a law banning professional assisted suicide services, reopening a bitter debate.

Lawmakers had passed the so-called Paragraph 217 in November 2015, which penalises anyone who turns assisted suicide into a professional service – with or without payment.

But a Leipzig administrative court’s ruling two years later, in 2017, raised questions about the law, as judges found that in extreme cases, the authorities could not refuse life-ending medication to terminally ill patients.

The contradictory signals have fuelled renewed debate on an issue that has huge resonance in a fast-ageing country where the Church still exerts strong influence.

It is also a particularly sensitive subject as the Nazis had used what they called “euthanasia” to exterminate around 200,000 disabled people.

The Federal Constitutional Court will begin considering the latest challenge brought by six plaintiffs – among them terminally ill patients, doctors and associations that provide support to people seeking assisted suicide.

In practice, the law means that a husband who helps his terminally ill wife to die would not be prosecuted. But an association or a business that repeatedly offered to help people die would face prosecution.

The situation is also not so clearcut for doctors who prescribe deadly cocktails to patients.

In their case before the constitutional court, the patients argue that their general personal right extends to their right to a self-determined death.

The medical practitioners are meanwhile seeking legal certainty in cases when they are required to prescribe palliative medication.