Nikola Göttling sees it “shared” between satisfaction and disappointment. This 51-year-old Viennese fought for assisted suicide to be authorized in Austria. It’s done: since 1is January, adults over the age of 18 with “incurable” or “serious and permanent illnesses with persistent symptoms whose consequences affect the person concerned lastingly throughout their life” can obtain assistance in order to put an end, themselves- same, to their day.
→ READ. End of life: how civil society pushes European states to legislate
Among the conditions, to submit to an interview with two doctors, one of whom specializes in palliative care, to be deemed capable of making a decision alone, and to wait twelve weeks before obtaining a lethal product from a pharmacy.
A text passed reluctantly
This change in legislation was made necessary following the Constitutional Court, in December 2020, found the criminalization of assisted suicide to be contrary to the “principle of free will”. The judges had given the federal government a year to regulate this practice. Approved on December 16 by all Austrian parties, except the extreme right, the new law reflects the tensions of the coalition government. Faced with more open environmentalists on the issue, the conservatives of the ÖVP party, close to the Catholic Church, wanted to frame as much as possible a text that they passed reluctantly.
It is the safeguards put in place that arouse Nikola Göttling’s reservations. “It will not be so easy to put this right into practice”, considers this mother of two children suffering since 2003 from multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease which forces her to move around in a wheelchair. “I can still do a lot of things alone, but I’m in constant pain and don’t want to end my days dependent in a home”, says the neuropsychologist, forced to cease her activity in 2013.
She wishes she might end her life when the time comes, but sees the limits of the new law. In January, she tried to get contact details for doctors willing to help. “The Council of the Order did not want to give me names.” If finding help in Vienna, in the capital, is complicated, imagine what it will be like in other regions and in the countryside! Not to mention the opposition of Catholic institutions, ” she regrets.
108 million euros to develop palliative care
For the country’s Catholic medical institutions, too, the new law poses a practical challenge. “We do not offer assisted suicide,” confirms Sabina Dirnberger-Meixner, spokesperson for Caritas Socialis, a women’s order which manages care establishments in Vienna. “We often hear patients say they no longer want to live and we try to offer them the best support possible. But we cannot oppose personal choices,” she specifies, while according to the new law, a “euthanasia assistant” cannot be refused entry to an establishment, Catholic or not.
Between supporters and opponents of assisted suicide, there is consensus on one subject: all support the new program of 108 million euros intended to develop palliative care and approved in December. “This is a very important step, because this care can limit requests for assisted suicide”says Sabina Dirnberger-Meixner.
→ INVESTIGATION. Assisted suicide, the Vatican’s strategic turn on bioethics
Same reaction from the president of the Austrian Episcopal Conference. “In principle, we cannot be satisfied with the new law, but we recognize the efforts made by the legislator to protect people from haste and error and to anchor the possibilities of suicide prevention”, said Bishop Franz Lackner in December. According to him, the new law might nevertheless be “the first step in a dynamic that will continue to undermine the protection of vulnerable people”. In the line of fire is, among other things, active euthanasia, which remains prohibited.
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A practice authorized in four other countries of the European Union
► The Netherlands are the first state in the world to decriminalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, under certain conditions, in April 2001.
► Belgium followed in their footsteps in September 2002, by decriminalizing active euthanasia, which is very strictly supervised. It becomes, twelve years later, the first country in the world to legalize the euthanasia of minors, without age limit.
► Luxembourg legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in March 2009, in the event of a medical situation « sans issue »but the practice remains prohibited for minors.
► Spain becomes, on March 18, 2021, the fourth country in the European Union to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, when the patient takes the prescribed dose himself.
