Activists calling for the decriminalization of assisted suicide in the Netherlands sued the Dutch government on Monday, arguing that its ban on a user ending their life violates human rights.
The case before The Hague District Court is the latest legal war in a long-running debate over end-of-life issues in the country, which in 2002 was the first in the world to pass a law decriminalizing euthanasia.
An organization called Cooperative Last Will asked the court to assert that the Dutch state is “acting unlawfully by denying its citizens the right to die with dignity under their own control. “
Its president, Jos van Wijk, said he wanted the Netherlands to once again play a leading role in the law governing people’s lives.
“The Netherlands has pioneered legislation on abortion, same-sex marriage and euthanasia. And now we’re trailblaring again when it comes to the end of life,” he said.
Euthanasia comes to doctors, in strict situations, actively killing patients with an injection of drugs. In medical assistance to die, patients receive a deadly substance that they themselves take.
The Last Will cooperative, which claims to have only about 30,000 members, needs the case to force changes in Dutch law to decriminalize assistance to others who want to commit suicide at the time of their choice and to have a lethal substance manufactured. had under strict conditions.
The Dutch government says many other people who want to end their lives can benefit from the existing euthanasia law.
“However, the state is not obligated, and that’s what it’s all about, to facilitate assisted suicide, let alone allow it in all circumstances,” government lawyer Erik Koppe told a three-judge panel.
The cooperative’s lawyers argued that the European Court of Human Rights enshrines dying at the time and position of its choice. Government lawyers disputed this claim.
“No right to die assisted through a third party or from a public authority can be derived from the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, nor from a right to assisted suicide,” Koppe said.
The court said it would make a ruling on Dec. 14.
Trials for assisted suicide are rare in the Netherlands. The crime is punishable by up to 3 years in prison.
Last year, prosecutors charged Van Wijk with “participation in a criminal organization whose purpose is to devote and/or plan the crime of assisted suicide. “
Van Wijk, who denies the charges, told judges on Monday that the Dutch government is enforcing and upholding the ban as witnesses and relatives are “intimidated and criminalized. “
He said strict enforcement of the ban and prohibition on manufacturing a lethal substance “are measures that we deserve to be organized in some other way in a civilized society. “
At the end of the hearing, a plaintiff, Marion van Gerrevink, told the court she discovered the body of her son Rob, 21, after he hanged himself in 2010.
“I still suffer the feeling of having abandoned my son. In his last very depressed period, he had to find a way to engage in suicide on his own and had to take his last step alone,” she said.
It would have been less difficult for his circle of family to accept Rob’s death “if only we had accompanied our dear and dear son and brother on this latest adventure and he could leave life in a dignified and humane way. “She added.
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