Since last Thursday, in Austria, the suicide witnessed is legal. The Parliament of Vienna thus filled the legislative void, produced by a sentence of the Constitutional Court, as the fundamental human right of “self-determination”. At the contemporary, the old law prohibiting suicide had been licensed and granted the legislative “far west”. A scenario, therefore, very similar to the Italian one.

second the recently approved Austrian law, which will enter into force on 1 January 2022, suicide has been approved by citizens over the age of 18, who have drawn up a bio-test delivered to their notary or lawyer, and who are terminally ill or in a a condition of permanent and particularly debilitating suffering. Each case must be evaluated and approved by two doctors, of which at least one is an expert in palliative care: it will be up to the two specialists, who decide whether their patient’s request to die is freely or conditioned by external factors or pressures.

Once the request to die has been formalized, remain at least twelve weeks: the time necessary to ensure that the will is firm and constant and not the result of a momentary crisis of the patient. In the case of the terminally ill, the same time can be reduced to two weeks.

The assisted suicide law was passed in the Austrian parliament by a popular majority, which includes the Party and the Greens, currently in government, and the opposition Liberals and Socialists. The only vote against was that of the right-wing nationalists of the FPÖ. The Minister of Justice, Alma Zadic (Verdi) announced contextual additional measures for an “alternative to suicide”, from hospice to palliative care, along with other suicide prevention initiatives.

Among the few voices opposed to assisted suicide in the country are listed the Austrian bishops, who, in the course of the parliamentary debate, had denounced “unacceptable deficiencies” as regards the guarantee of prevention from abuses. “In a very short time – declared Monsignor Franz Lackner, archbishop of Salzburg and president of the Austrian Bishops’ Conference – the exceptional case becomes a socially accepted normality and the exemption from the penalty a right to be enforced”.

The prelates had also complained about the absence of the psychiatrist from the request evaluation team. According to the Austrian bishops, the new law on suicide revealed a pedagogical intent, whereby “the only form of life worth living” is a “full and active life”, while “every form of deficiency or disease is seen like a failure that cannot be tolerated ». While acknowledging the efforts of the legislator in “protecting people from haste and error”, Monsignor Lackner wished that it was not the Austrian citizens who died but the law “if we as a community of solidarity can prevent anyone in Austria from making them use”.