In our country, palliative care and quality of life for patients with incurable diseases such as advanced cancer and AIDS have become a major concern for clinicians. At the same time, the controversial issue of euthanasia or « mercy killings » of terminally ill patients has raised concerns. Proponents of physician-assisted suicide (SAP) argue that a person`s right to autonomy automatically gives them the right to choose a painless and respectful death. Patient advocates calling for a right to how and when they die have become increasingly vocal in recent years, sparked by the high-profile cases of Jack Kevorkian, Timothy Quill and Aruna Shanbaug. These cases concerned the fate of dying patients with serious illnesses. Voluntary active euthanasia, called « medical assistance in dying, » is legal in Canada for anyone over the age of 18 with an incurable disease that has progressed to the point where natural death is « reasonably foreseeable. » To prevent suicidal tourism, only people who are eligible for Canadian health insurance are allowed to use it. The legalization of the practice took place in 2015-2016 following a series of Supreme Court decisions that struck down the ban on physician-assisted suicide in Canada. Here is a chronology of events: On February 20, 2008, the country`s parliament passed a law legalizing euthanasia at first reading with 30 votes out of 59 in favour. On 19 March 2009, the bill was adopted at second reading, making Luxembourg the third country in the European Union to decriminalize euthanasia, after the Netherlands and Belgium. Patients with incurable diseases have the option of euthanasia after obtaining approval from two doctors and a panel of experts. [71] A report of a parliamentary committee charged with investigating the matter in light of the Supreme Court of Canada decision recommended that anyone who suffers « unbearable suffering » be given the opportunity to seek medical assistance in dying.
[92] Euthanasia is strictly prohibited in Turkey. Assisting a person to commit suicide or suicide shall be punished as complicity in suicide in accordance with Article 84 of the Turkish Penal Code. Subject to active euthanasia, article 81 of the same law stipulates that any person who commits this act is sentenced to life imprisonment and punished for simple murder. Euthanasia is not legal in Latvia. [68] However, a physician may refuse to continue a patient`s treatment if he or she believes this is the best course of action. [69] In July 2013, French President François Hollande declared his personal support for the decriminalization of voluntary euthanasia in France, which had been one of his election promises (« introduction of the right to die with dignity »). despite the objections of the French National Advisory Ethics Committee/Comité national consultatif d`éthique, which claimed « abuses » in neighbouring jurisdictions that decriminalized and regulated either voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide (Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). More socially conservative members of the Catholic Church and other major religious groups in France had announced that their next goal, after speaking out against the introduction of same-sex marriage in France, could be the possible decriminalization of voluntary euthanasia. [43] The National Assembly and the Ministry of Health and Welfare voted in favour of active and passive euthanasia and came into force in February 2018 and announced their intention to enact a « dying persons » law. [100] However, the issue and debate about euthanasia in South Korea flared up for a long time, beginning on December 4, 1997, when a doctor was sent to prison for an extended period of time for voluntarily interrupting the life support of a brain-dead patient who had injured himself from head trauma at the request of his wife. This incident is known in Korea as the « Boramae Hospital Incident » (보라매병원 사건). Another incident that sparked further debate was the detention of a father who was plugging in a ventilator for his brain-dead son.
[101] In the 1973 Postma case, a doctor was convicted of facilitating his mother`s death after repeatedly explicitly requesting euthanasia. [77] Although the court`s decision upheld the conviction, it established criteria by which a physician would not be required to keep a patient alive against his or her will.