The Austrian Constitutional Court, by its decision on Friday, December 11, abolished criminal liability for facilitating voluntary suicide from January 1, 2022. Since then, the country must allow euthanasia.
This is reported by the Wiener Zeitung.
The court ruled that criminal liability for assisted suicide (that is, helping a person die voluntarily) violates the right to self-determination. At the same time, the judges in their decision differentiated between assisted suicide and contract murder, which remains a criminal offense.
The decision of the Constitutional Court states that assisted suicide is possible only in the form of taking special drugs to shorten life, which is prescribed by a doctor. But before that, you need to make sure that this is a voluntary decision of a seriously ill person and that, for example, his financial condition did not affect him.
The decision of the Constitutional Court does not mean automatically extracting assisted suicide from the Criminal Code. According to the decision, by January 1, 2022, the country’s parliament must develop and adopt relevant legislation.
