Ms. Schardt was 79 years old and healthy at the time she sought out Mr. Kusch to seek out help for assisted suicide. She did not want to go into a nursing home.
While Ms. Schardt was not suffering from a life-threatening disease, or in acute pain, her life was hardly pleasant, Mr. Kusch said. She had trouble moving around her apartment, where she lived alone. Having never married, she had no family. She also had few friends, and rarely ventured out.
In such circumstances, a nursing home seemed likely to be the next stop. And for Ms. Schardt, who Mr. Kusch said feared strangers and had a low tolerance for those less clever than she was, that was an unbearable prospect.
...
On Friday, Bavaria and four other German states will push for new laws to ban commercial ventures that help people kill themselves. Suicide itself is not a crime, nor is aiding a suicide, provided it does not cross the line into euthanasia, or mercy killing.
via NYTimes.com
It is important to note that nearby Switzerland has liberal euthanasia laws which has led nearly 500 Germans to cross the border.Kusch, a German politician who has designed a one button push suicide machine, planned it out carefully to stay within the law.
I came to her apartment in Würzburg at about 11 o'clock last Saturday morning,” Mr Kusch, who has no medical training, said. Within half an hour she was preparing the suicide cocktail, he said. Mr Kusch then left the room. When he returned after three hours, Bettina S was dead. The exact procedures used by Mr Kusch were important, designed to keep him within the law and to demonstrate that people could help someone to die without risking jail. via timesonline.co.uk
This is a case that illustrates the dangers of euthanasia and assisted suicide for those who are most vulnerable, where these measures can turn them into expendable people. It is a case that teaches us about what happens when societies fail to provide adequate options to live.
No comments:
Post a Comment