Euthanasia Active support facilities are prohibited

In individual cases suicide help remains impunity
After the Bundestag yesterday already decided to improve the hospice and palliative care, today was the far more controversial topic of euthanasia on the agenda. Help for suicide has been the subject of much controversy for years. While some states, such as the Netherlands, allow active euthanasia in certain institutions, in Germany a corresponding self-help is prohibited. In the case of assisted suicide, criminal penalties may be waived in individual cases. This will remain so in the future.

The majority of the German Bundestag today voted in favor of the inter-factional "draft law on the criminal liability of business promotion of suicide", according to the statement of the Federal Ministry of Health. This means that facilities and clubs to assist in suicide are still prohibited. In individual cases, euthanasia may remain unpunished, but here too, no basic impunity is guaranteed.

Assistance facilities for suicide continue to be banned in Germany. (Image: ursule / fotolia.com)

From the complete prohibition to the basic permission
The range of applications submitted for the future handling of suicide help also reflects the controversial debate that has been going on for years on euthanasia. Thus, the proposals of a permission of the euthanasia (application of the Bundestag Vice President Peter Hintze and the deputy SPD parliamentary group leader Carola Reimann) up to a general criminal punishment of the euthanasia (request Patrick Sensburg, CDU). At the end of the day, the majority of the bill was passed to parliamentarians Michael Brand (CDU), Kerstin Griese (SPD), Kathrin Vogler (The Left) and Dr. Ing. Harald Terpe (Alliance 90 / The Greens), according to the statement of the Federal Ministry of Health. The draft provided for a ban on business-related self-help, but in individual cases the aid for suicide would remain unpunished.

Suicide help as a service a taboo
The Federal Minister of Health Hermann Gröhe stressed that it was "right that our legal system is silent on the drama of suicide." Fundamental should therefore "on the impunity of the individual suicide altogether hold - without a special criminal law for any professional group." However, it was a complete Different situation, whether a person determined to commit suicide talks to another person about possible acts of support, or whether clubs offer this as an indispensable target group this as a service, justified the Federal Minister of Health the adopted ban on business-related suicide.

Euthanasia is not a medical task
It was also to be welcomed that the medical profession had made it clear that self-help is not a medical task, explains Gröhe. The medical ethics and the right of the profession should not be undermined by an explicit civil law permission of the medical self-help. Should physicians "exceed this standard law requirement in the individual case of the highest conscience distress, then it is the task of the competent medical chamber to appreciate the concrete case appropriately," said Gröhe weiuter. He has "great confidence in the medical profession that such an examination as in the past with reason and judgment," said the Federal Minister of Health. (Fp)