“Worldwide, only a tiny minority of countries allow assisted suicide. Wherever the practice is allowed, legal ‘safeguards’ are insufficient to prevent abuses, proving most harmful to vulnerable members of society, including the elderly, the disabled, and those suffering from mental illness or depression. Suicide is something society rightly considers a tragedy to be prevented, and the same must apply to assisted suicide. Care, not killing, must be the goal we all strive towards,” Van De Walle said.
Hungarian lawyer Daniel Karsai, diagnosed with a neurodegenerative condition, argued that criminalizing physician-assisted suicide violates the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects private and family life and prohibits discrimination. Hungarian law would make those assisting his suicide liable to prosecution, and he argued that prohibiting PAS/E (physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia) was discriminatory because terminally ill patients are able to ask for treatment to be withdrawn.
ADF warned that abuses inevitably follow when the right to life is abolished.
“Removing such provisions from law creates a dangerous scenario where pressure is placed on vulnerable people to end their lives in fear (whether or not justified) of being a burden upon relatives, carers, or a state that is short of resources,” the brief stated.
The court concurred with ADF on June 13, finding “no basis for concluding that the member states are thereby advised, let alone required, to provide access” to assisted suicide. The court said there are risks of error and abuse in providing physician-assisted dying, and huge societal implications.
The court also found that Hungary’s law prohibiting PAS/E protects the disabled and terminally ill.
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