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Germany’s highest court has overturned a ban on assisted suicide, introduced in 2015, which was ‘supposed to prevent anyone offering assisted sucide as a commercial venture’ while excempting from punishment ‘relatives or doctors who helped a single patient to die on a one-off basis’; the German constitutional court ruled that the ban meant those ‘offering […]
In September, in a case known as Truchon v Canada, Quebec Superior Court Justice Christine Baudouin declared parts of both the federal and provincial laws on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) unconstitutional. Her judgement struck down the requirement in Canada’s euthanasia laws that death be reasonably foreseeable before euthanasia could take place. On Monday, the Canadian […]
After its parliament approved five bills this week, Portugal will probably become the next country to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide. The next step is for a committee to consolidate the five proposals into one bill. However, right to die is not yet done and dusted. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, a conservative, could veto […]
After consulting its members, the British representative body for family doctors, the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) said it remained opposed to assisted suicide. Almost half (47%) of those surveyed said the College should not change its position, while 40% of GPs said they would support a change in the law, if safeguards were in […]
A Dutch woman suffering with mental health problems has shared her story of how a psychiatrist suggested she ask for euthanasia because he could see she was “tired out” and had “gone through too much”.
A bill to allow euthanasia and assisted suicide took its first step in the Spanish parliament last week, in a win for the new left-leaning government. In a vote on whether to allow the bill to proceed, 203 deputies voted in favour, 140 against and two abstained. The bill will be debated before a final […]
Euthanasia and assisted suicide in prison is always a controversial issue, even when they are legal. Informed consent is difficult to verify; the prisoners are evading their debt to society. The cost of maintaining inmates may decrease but voters may be horrified by utilitarian policies. Nonetheless, Switzerland has decided to allow prisoners to request assisted suicide. […]
The Provincial and Federal governments in Canada need to amend their euthanasia laws quickly. They have to meet a March 2020 deadline set by last year by Quebec Superior Court Justice Baudouin who ruled that it was unconstitutional to deny Canadians the right to die unless their deaths were “reasonably foreseeable”. Amongst other issues, lawmakers […]
In an interview, writer Guy Kennaway reveals to Rosa Silverman how, three years ago, he was asked by ‘his elderly mother and her third husband’ to help them to die, telling him: ‘“We have decided to kill ourselves … I need to get hold of the right drugs. Can you buy me some heroin?”’ Susie […]
The Canadian province of Quebec will expand the eligibility criteria for euthanasia to include people with severe and incurable mental illness, says Health Minister Danielle McCann. The guidelines will be drafted by the Quebec college of physicians. Both the minister and the college believe that few people would be affected. “We don’t expect many of these patients […]
On Tuesday an historic trial commences in Belgium. It will be the first time that doctors have faced criminal charges over euthanasia since it was legalised in 2002. Three of them have been charged with illegal poisoning. If convicted, they face stiff prison sentences. The deceased was a 38-year-old woman, Tine Nys, who died in 2010. Three doctors […]
A paralysed former builder from Leeds, 63-year-old Paul Lamb, has failed in his ‘High Court bid to challenge the law on assisted dying’; having ‘lost a right-to-die case in the Supreme Court in 2014’, he argued that ‘the current law, which bans assisted suicide under threat of up to 14 years in jail, is discriminatory […]
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