Legality by country[edit]
Australia[edit]
Main article: Euthanasia in Australia
Assisted suicide is currently illegal throughout Australia, but was for a time legal in the Northern Territory under the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995.
Belgium[edit]
The "Euthanasia Act" legalized euthanasia in Belgium in 2002,[16][17] but it didn't cover assisted suicide.[18]
In 2006, Belgium partially legalized euthanasia with certain regulations:
The patient must be an adult and in a "futile medical condition of constant and unbearable physical or mental suffering that cannot be alleviated"[19]
The patient must have a long-term history with the doctor, with euthanasia/physician assisted suicide only allowed for permanent residents
There need to be several requests that are reviewed by a commission and approved by two doctors.[20]
Canada[edit]
Main article: Euthanasia in Canada
Suicide was considered a criminal offence in Canada until 1972, after which it was removed from the Criminal Code.
Following the Supreme Court of Canada decision Carter v Canada (AG), released February 6, 2015, physician-assisted suicide is legal in Canada pending a twelve-month period of suspension.[21]
The Criminal Code of Canada states in section 241(b) that
Every one who ….(b) aids or abets a person to commit suicide, whether suicide ensues or not, is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years"[22]
The reason behind its former illegality owed to preventing people from 'assisting in suicide' those that are not mentally capable of making the decision and because of the "value that society places on human life" which "in the eyes of the law makers, might easily be eroded if assistance in committing suicide were to be decriminalized."[22]
In 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada heard a case (Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General)) in which Sue Rodriguez, a terminally ill woman, challenged the prohibition of assisted suicide as contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In a 5 to 4 decision, the Court upheld the provision in the Criminal Code of Canada.
On June 15, 2012, the British Columbia Supreme Court struck down the prohibition against physician-assisted suicide, calling the current law discriminatory, disproportionate and overbroad. Justice Lynn Smith suspended her ruling for a period of one year in order to give Parliament time to draft legislation with her ruling in mind.[23] Within a month, the federal government announced it would appeal that ruling.[24] On October 25, 2012, the federal government filed its 54-page legal argument, arguing inter alia that the purpose of the current legislation is "to protect the vulnerable, who might be induced in moments of weakness to commit suicide", that "it is a reflection of the state’s policy that the inherent value of all human life should not be depreciated by allowing one person to take another’s life", and that the B.C. Supreme Court had no right to attempt to overrule the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling in the 1993 Rodriguez case.[25] On December 10, 2012, the British Columbia Court of Appeal announced that it had scheduled a hearing for the appeal in March, 2013.[26]
In June 2014, doctor-assisted suicide or euthanasia became legal in the province of Quebec.[27]
On February 6, 2015, The Supreme Court of Canada released their decision in the Carter v Canada (AG) case, a landmark ruling where the prohibition of assisted suicide was illegal and struck it down by a unanimous vote. The court found that section 241(b) and section 14 of the Criminal Code unjustifiably infringed on Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.[28]
China[edit]
An article in People's Daily reported that "Nine people from Xi'an City in China made news when they 'jointly wrote to local media asking for euthanasia, or mercy killings'".[29] These people had uremia, a disease due to the failure of the kidneys, and expressed their "unbearable suffering and [an unwillingness] to burden their families any more".[30] The article stated because it is illegal for doctors to help their patients die, all that could be done for them was to ask the doctors to ease their pain.[29]
Colombia[edit]
Despite its strict Roman Catholic history, in May 1997 Colombian courts allowed for the euthanasia of sick patients who requested to end their lives.[20] This ruling came about owing to the efforts of a group that strongly opposed euthanasia. When one of its members brought a lawsuit to the Colombian Supreme Court against it, the court issued a 6 to 3 decision that "spelled out the rights of a terminally ill person to engage in voluntary euthanasia."[31]
Though physician-assisted suicide is legal, the country has no way to document or set rules and regulations for doctors and patients who want to end their lives. Though it is opposed on religious grounds by many Colombians, many patients have still been able to find doctors to assist them in ending their lives.[20]
Denmark[edit]
Denmark has no laws regarding physician-assisted suicide.[citation needed]
France[edit]
The controversy over legalising euthanasia and physician assisted suicide is not as big as in the United States because of the country's "well developed hospice care programme".[32] However, in 2000 the controversy over the uncontroversial topic was ignited with Vincent Humbert. After a car crash that left him "unable to 'walk, see, speak, smell or taste'", he used the movement of his right thumb to write a book, I Ask the Right to Die (Je vous demande le droit de mourir) in which he voiced his desire to "die legally".[32] After his appeal was denied, his mother assisted in killing him by injecting him with an overdose of barbiturates that put him into a coma, killing him 2 days later. Though his mother was arrested for aiding in her son's death and later acquitted, the case did jumpstart a new legislation which states that when medicine serves "no other purpose than the artificial support of life" it can be "suspended or not undertaken".[33]
In 2013 President Francois Hollande said that France should hold a national debate on the issue and stated his intention to introduce a bill to parliament before the end of the year. Opinion polls in France show that the majority of the public are in favour of an assisted suicide law,[34] however France's national ethics committee has advised against any change in the law.[35]
Germany[edit]
Killing somebody in accordance with his demands is always illegal under the German criminal code (Paragraph 216, "Killing at the request of the victim; mercy killing").[36]
Assisting with suicide by, for example, providing poison or a weapon, is generally legal. Since suicide itself is legal, assistance or encouragement is not punishable by the usual legal mechanisms dealing with complicity and incitement (German criminal law follows the idea of "accessories of complicity" which states that "the motives of a person who incites another person to commit suicide, or who assists in its commission, are irrelevant").[37] Nor is assisting with suicide explicitly outlawed by the criminal code. There can however be legal repercussions under certain conditions for a number of reasons. Aside from laws regulating firearms, the trade and handling of controlled substances and the like (e.g. when acquiring poison for the suicidal person), this concerns three points:
Free vs. manipulated will[edit]
If the suicidal person is not acting out of his own free will, then assistance is punishable by any of a number of homicide offences that the criminal code provides for, as having "acted through another person" (§25, section 1 of the German criminal code,[38] usually called "mittelbare Täterschaft"). Action out of free will is not ruled out by the decision to end one's life in itself; it can be assumed as long as a suicidal person "decides on his own fate up to the end […] and is in control of the situation."[37]
Free will cannot be assumed, however, if someone is manipulated or deceived. A classic textbook example for this, in German law, is the so-called Sirius case on which the Federal Court of Justice ruled in 1983: The accused had convinced an acquaintance that she would be re-incarnated into a better life if she killed herself. She unsuccessfully attempted suicide, leading the accused to be charged with, and eventually convicted of attempted murder.[39] (The accused had also convinced the acquaintance that he hailed from the star Sirius, hence the name of the case).
Apart from manipulation, the criminal code states three conditions under which a person is not acting under his own free will:
if the person is under 14
if the person has "one of the mental diseases listed in §20 of the German Criminal Code"[40]
a person that is acting under a state of emergency.
Under these circumstances, even if colloquially speaking one might say a person is acting of his own free will, a conviction of murder is possible.