Socio-ethical objections to assisted suicide

In its judgment of 26 February 2020, the Federal Constitutional Court announced that a right to suicide can be inferred from the general right of personality in Article 2 and the guarantee of human dignity in Article 1 of the Basic Law, and that the legislature's competences are limited to ensuring that the decision to commit suicide arises from the free will of the suicidal person. Since then, the parties have been arguing about a constitutionally compliant law on assisted suicide. From the point of view of social ethics, there are several objections to legalizing assisted suicide. Legalization endangers solidarity with people in vulnerable situations. It endangers the Hippocratic oath, which forbids the doctor to provide the patient with a deadly poison. It endangers the freedom of church diaconia to prohibit euthanasia associations from entering their own facilities. Fixated on an illusionary autonomy, it ignores the community-bound nature of the person. The logic of assisted suicide is the legalization of killing on demand, as demonstrated by the countries in which assisted suicide has been legalized.