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In Germany, six complaints to the prohibition on 'businesslike' assisted suicide are brought to the Federal Constitutional Court and discussed there on the 16th and 17th of April. According to critics, the definition of 'business' would imply that a medical doctor is already guilty if he provides a seriously ill patient with a deadly drug, more than once. In addition, a number of issues also play a role. It will take some months before the Constitutional Court orders a verdict to the complaints.
In the Netherlands, the lawsuit about assisted suicide from a son (Albert Heringa) to his mother (Moek Heringa) has come to an end. On the 16th of April, the Dutch Supreme Court reached its final verdict: that the ruling of the Court of Appeal from 2018, that Heringa was punishable to the crime of assisted suicide, could hold stand.
This week, the Spanish authorities decided to prosecute Ángel Hernández for his assistance in the suicide of his wife, earlier this month. Hernández' wife, Maria José Carrasco, had been suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (MS) for thirty years and was in very poor condition. She wanted to end her life for a long time and had formulated this in an advance directive and on various videos made by her husband.
On Friday, April 12, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed the Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act into law. Less than a month ago, this bill passed the Assembly and Senate. New Jersey is now the seventh state and eight jurisdiction (including Washington DC) that has a death with dignity statute. The law goes into effect on August 1, 2019.
The Dutch Regional Euthanasia Review Committees (RTE's) published their annual report about 2018. In that year for the first time there was a slight decrease in the number of reports of euthanasia to the RTE's. The social debate in 2018 focused in particular on the interpretation of requests from patients with advanced dementia and from patients with a psychiatric disorder.
Dying with Dignity Canada published its March 2019 Newsletter.
Matt Vickers, the widower of assisted dying advocate Lecretia Seales, wrote an article about assisted dying in New Zealand, and compared the New Zealand situation to the situation in the Netherlands and Switzerland. In March, this article was published by NOTED, a journalism website in New Zealand.