GERMAN CASE ENDORSES EUTHANASIA

German case endorses euthanasia
Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 7/3/2010 4:25:00 AMA German federal court's decision in one case has ultimately legalized euthanasia in that country.

Since a woman "mistakenly" followed her attorney's advice and killed her comatose mother by cutting her feeding and hydration tube, the court overturned her conviction. According to Alex Schadenberg, executive director at the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC), the Federal Court of Justice legalized euthanasia in that process.

"This is a big concern because this is a form of euthanasia: when one intentionally causes the death of another person by dehydration when they are not otherwise dying," he notes.

Wolfgang Putz, the lawyer to the victim's daughter in the case, was given a nine-month suspension sentence for his advice. The EPC executive director relates the situation to Nazi Germany, when officials decided to rid the country of disabled people.

"They dehydrated people with disabilities...and people in the psychiatric hospitals to death, and then they used the gas methods," he reports. "After they had gotten used to using the gas methods, they took that gas method of killing people with disabilities and psychiatric patients and they moved them into the death clinics, the death houses...like Dachau and all these other places."

In issuing this ruling, Schadenberg believes the Federal Court of Justice is not pushing Germany down a slippery slope toward euthanasia as an accepted practice. Instead, he feels it has taken a worse route and pushed the country over the cliff.