Niklas Petersen

Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine, Göttingen University Medical Centre

Although assisted suicide is permitted in Germany, it remains unregulated following the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling in 2020 that the ban on the commercial promotion of suicide was unconstitutional. According to the court’s reasoning, suicide is an expression of individual self-determination, and this right also includes the freedom to seek assistance from third parties. At the same time, it was recognised that the increasing normalisation of assisted dying carries with it the risk of social pressures that could undermine autonomy and lead to people resorting to assisted suicide.

To examine the social and ethical implications of liberalising assisted dying in a nuanced way, it is worth looking at countries that have already liberalised assisted dying in recent years. The case of Canada is particularly illuminating, as the country has evolved within a decade from a complete ban on assisted dying to becoming one of the countries with the highest prevalence of euthanasia worldwide.

In Canada, the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the ban on medically assisted suicide was unconstitutional, as it violated the fundamental rights to life, liberty and security of the person. As a result, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) was legalised, initially restricted to people whose natural death was foreseeable, and later – following a further court ruling – extended to all people suffering from a serious and incurable illness. More than five per cent of all deaths are now attributable to medically assisted dying on request. Human rights organisations criticise the fact that, particularly in the context of inadequate social security and medical care, vulnerable groups are effectively being pushed into assisted suicide by the normalisation of medically assisted dying.

The aim of this lecture is to examine, on the basis of current bioethical, health policy and legal debates in Canada, which factors and institutional arrangements have facilitated the normalisation of assisted dying there, and, against the backdrop of the German discussions on the reform of assisted suicide, to critically examine the ethical and social consequences of extending euthanasia.