Citation

Birnbacher D. Ethik Med. 2022; 34(2): 161-176.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s00481-021-00678-3

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Definition of the problem Even among advocates of the permissibility of suicide assistance by physicians under certain conditions, there is a broad agreement that no physician should be legally or professionally obliged to assist in suicide. In its judgment of February 2020, the German Federal Constitutional Court granted persons under certain conditions no more than an undirected in rem right to suicide assistance that does not amount to a claim against any individual physician. On the contrary, with the last sentence of its judgment, it has emphatically affirmed the freedom of each individual physician--as well as every other possible helper--to say no. Arguments and Conclusions Against the background of an empirical study of the reasons given in Switzerland for the rejection of relevant patient requests, the article examines and weighs the reasons for this freedom from an ethical point of view and defends a conditional right to refuse participation against its recent critics. In cases in which the conditions are satisfied through which the Bundesverwaltungsgericht defined "extreme distress" in its judgement of March 2017, a moral obligation should be recognized at least to refer the patient to a physician prepared to help. © 2021, The Author(s).

Language: de

Keywords

Referral; Assisting suicide; Conscientious objection; “Extreme distress”