German Court Overturns Ban on Professionally-Assisted Suicide

Germany's top court rejected on Wednesday a law passed five years ago banning medically assisted suicide and denying the right to die in dignity.

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The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that Paragraph 217 of the penal code, in force since 2015 which criminalized euthanasia, was unconstitutional.

The law had stated that "anyone who, with the intention of assisting another person to commit suicide, provides, procures or arranges the opportunity for that person to do so and whose actions are intended as a recurring pursuit incurs a penalty of imprisonment."

The wording of the legislation led to debates among legal experts about whether doctors were even allowed to provide consultations.

The change in legislation had forced terminally ill patients to travel to neighboring Switzerland, the Netherlands, or Belgium to end their lives. Doctors found guilty could have faced up to three years in prison.

But last year, even though euthanasia was still illegal, Germany's Supreme Court overturned guilty verdicts against two doctors who had helped three patients die by administering lethal doses of medication, at the patients' request.

Reading out the verdict on Wednesday in Karlsruhe, presiding judge Andreas Vosskühle, said that an individual does have the right to determine the manner and time of their death, with the professional assistance of medical practitioners.

The law change occurred five years ago, designed to stop euthanasia from becoming commonplace and to prevent businesses or groups profiting from the practice.

The issue is particularly sensitive in Germany, where some 300,000 mentally or physically disabled people were murdered by the Nazis.

The Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany are also firmly against euthanasia, with both rejecting all forms of assisted suicide.

Even though it is a secular country, the churches still wield considerable influence on the lives, and deaths, of Germans.

It will now be up to the government whether to re-open the debate to work on a measure in line with the court's ruling.