Germany’s Highest Court Creates Right to ‘Self-Determined Death’
The logic of euthanasia/assisted suicide has always pointed towards a right to death-on-demand. Assisted-suicide activists deny it for reasons of expediency. But the logic is irrefutable. If there is a “right to die,” how can it be limited to restricting categories?
Well, the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest judicial body, has gone there and without equivocation. In overturning a legal ban on “professional assisted suicide,” i.e., by doctors, the court ruled that there is virtually an unlimited right “to a self-determined death” — and to also receive help from others in achieving that end. From the AFP story (my emphasis):
Judge Andreas Vosskuhle at the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe said the right to a self-determined death included “the freedom to take one’s life and seek help doing so”.
The court also surprised observers by explicitly stating that the right to assisted suicide services should not be limited to the seriously or incurably ill.
The freedom to choose one’s death “is guaranteed in all stages of a person’s existence”, the verdict read.
This right to receive help dying wouldn’t be limited do doctor-assisted suicide, by the way.
I write more on this at National Review, but suffice it to say that this is “death on demand” come true.