Politics
Thursday November 29, 2007
German Euthanasia Activists Announce Upcoming Illegal Assisted Suicide
TODAY'S HEADLINES
E-MAIL
PRINT
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
GERMANY, November 29, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Uwe-Christian Arnold, the deputy director of Dignitate, the German branch of Dignitas, has announced plans to set a legal precedent by carrying out an assisted suicide in Germany.
On November 9th, LifeSiteNews reported on the use of parked cars by Dignitas to carry out the assisted suicides of two Germans in Switzerland. More than half of the people who have killed themselves using Dignitas' services in Switzerland have been Germans.
The ambiguity of German laws regarding assisted suicide has set the stage for the latest development, but the plan to carry out the assisted suicide has raised a storm of protest. The head of the German Doctors' Association has called for Dignitate to be banned.
When asked in a Deutsche Welle interview why he was trying to set a legal precedent in Germany, Arnold said, "We are looking to set a test case because it is not clear whether a person can be prosecuted if they do not go to the aid of a person who is dying," and that it is "a pressing social need."
Thomas Schindler, head of the Bonn-based German Society for Palliative Medicine, said improvement and expansion of hospices and palliative care in Germany is the answer to the debate about assisted suicide, not encouraging the terminally ill to kill themselves or allowing organizations such as Dignitate a foothold in the country.
"Death and dying are still touchy subjects in our society and politicians have only paid lip service until now," Schindler said, but he sees hope in the German Health Ministry's announcement to "improve availability of care for persons suffering from incurable
illnesses in such a manner as to relieve their pain as far as possible and provide emotional and spiritual care to improve the quality of their lives so that they can die in dignity."
Josef Winkler, a Green Party parliamentarian and member of the Commission on Ethics and Law in Medicine, said that given the debate on assisted suicide, the immediate goal is to drastically increase the number of well-organized hospices in the country.
"Most people aren't scared of dying," Winkler pointed out in a Deutsche Welle report. "They're just scared of dying alone. There's an extremely low number of cases where doctors really can't help a patient anymore, and with the current advances in medicine and palliative care, dying patients do have a chance to live pain-free."
Back to TopLatest Headlines
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase out Lab Rats
- Ohio Supreme Court Allows Planned Parenthood to Conceal Abortion Records in Sexual Abuse Case
- LifeSiteNews Canada Day and Independence Day Message. Taking a few days off. LSN returns Monday July 6
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Pro-Life Groups Announce New Colorado Personhood Initiative
- Judge Puts Kibosh on DC Gay "Marriage" Referendum
- Al Franken Win Hands Supermajority to Senate Democrats
- Group Funded by Canadian Bishops' D&P Joins with Others to Denounce the "Natural Family" and "Family Rights"
- Financially Troubled Planned Parenthood of El Paso Closes Doors
- Abortion Linked to Subsequent Pre-Term Births, New Research Again Confirms
- New Orleans Homosexual Couple Ask Fed. Court to Overturn Marriage Amendment
- Slim Hope Of New Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Leader Promoting Pro-Life, Pro-Family Issues
- Pope Accepts Resignation of Bishop Caught Involved in Homosexual Encounters
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- Northern Ireland Politician Cleared of Wrongdoing after Reiterating Christian Teaching on Homosexual Acts
- UK Conservative Leader Speaks at Gay Pride Fundraiser
- More Letters to the Editor on Canadian Catholic Development and Peace Scandal (July 1)
- Letters to the Editor - Readers Respond to Development and Peace Scandal
- Watch This Dramatic New Video on Catholic Bishops Conference Funding of Pro-Abortion Groups
Most Read this Week
- Pro-Lifer Attacked with SUV, Alleged Attacker Charged
- Huckabee Hashes Out Abortion Arguments with Comedian Jon Stewart
- Homosexual Duke U. Director Charged with Offering Adopted 5-Year-Old for Sex
- Amnesty International Caught in "One Big Lie"
- Editorial: Archbishop Weisgerber is Wrong - Vatican Stopped its Donation to UNICEF in 1996
- Famed Fr. Corapi Calls Canadian Bishops' Dissent from Humanae Vitae "Catastrophic"
- Pope: It is a Childish Faith to Oppose the Church Teaching on Life and Family
- LifeSiteNews Detailed Response to Canadian Bishops' Whitewash Report on Development and Peace
- Is Pro-Choice the New Pro-Life?
- Government of Trinidad and Tobago: No Homosexual "Weddings," No Abortion
MORE NEWS: 
LifeSiteNews.com Home Page Last 10 Days Archives Special Reports
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.