Denmark committee recommends the legalization of euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Even though Denmark's Ethics council, overwhelming rejected the legalization of euthanasia in October 2023, the majority of a Danish committee recently recommended the legalization of euthanasia.

The Local Denmark reported on October 4, 2023 that Denmark's Ethics Council advised the Denmark parliament not to legalise euthanasia. The Local reported that:

An overwhelming majority of the Danish Council on Ethics have advised the country's parliament against voting to legalise euthanasia.

Fully sixteen out seventeen members of the committee concluded in a report that it was "in principle impossible to establish proper regulation of euthanasia", and as a result recommended that the law in Denmark should not be changed to allow people suffering mental or physical distress to receive help to end their own lives.

The ethics council wrote in the full report that:

"The very existence of an offer of euthanasia will decisively change our ideas about old age, the coming of death, quality of life and what it means to take others into account,"

"If euthanasia becomes an option, there is too great a risk that it will become an expectation aimed at special groups in society."

A few days ago, the majority in the "Committee for a more dignified death", submitted its recommendations for what euthanasia could look like in Denmark.

An article by Anders Heissel that was published by DR news reported that:

Seven out of the committee's eight members propose as the first model that "self-selected and self-executed end of life for terminally ill persons" should be introduced.

This means that any person who has a maximum of six months left to live has the right to receive medication prescribed by a doctor with the aim of ending their life themselves.

As the second model, five of the members propose that it should be possible to receive help to end their life from a healthcare professional such as a doctor or a nurse. - This is to respect people's right to self-determination.

Heissel further reported that:

The 'Committee for a more dignified death' was established in September 2023 with 10 members, but two members later left because, according to them, the committee had an "invariable" focus on establishing models for the possible introduction of assisted suicide in Denmark. 

Shortly after the committee was established, a clear recommendation came from the Ethics Council not to introduce active euthanasia, and this was the fourth time in 27 years that four different compositions of the Ethics Council have clearly distanced themselves from introducing active euthanasia. 

Denmark's Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, is pushing for the legalization of euthanasia.

Based on the world-wide experience with euthanasia, the Danish Ethics Council was correct in October 2023 that it was impossible to properly regulate euthanasia.

Euthanasia is an act that intentionally causes the death of a person upon request. No one should have the right in law to kill another person.

Denmark's Ethics Council rejects legalising euthanasia

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Parliament of Denmark

The Local Denmark reported on October 4, 2023 that Denmark's Ethics Council advised the Denmark parliament not to legalise euthanasia. The Local reported that:

An overwhelming majority of the Danish Council on Ethics have advised the country's parliament against voting to legalise euthanasia.

Fully sixteen out seventeen members of the committee concluded in a report that it was "in principle impossible to establish proper regulation of euthanasia", and as a result recommended that the law in Denmark should not be changed to allow people suffering mental or physical distress to receive help to end their own lives.

The ethics council wrote in the full report that:

"The very existence of an offer of euthanasia will decisively change our ideas about old age, the coming of death, quality of life and what it means to take others into account,"

"If euthanasia becomes an option, there is too great a risk that it will become an expectation aimed at special groups in society."

The Local reported that Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen brought the issue onto the agenda in June when she said that she might be in favour of a law allowing some people to die by euthanasia.

Birgitte Arent Eiriksson was the only member of the Danish Council of Ethics to support euthanasia but she suggested that:

euthanasia should only be legalised if there was sufficiently strong regulation in place, and called for further debate on the circumstances in which it should be allowed and how the process should be regulated.

After the report was released, politicians from the three parties in Denmark commented. The Local reported:

"The prime minister has expressed her own position, and now we need to have a discussion of the whole issue as this is a subject with a lot of ethical dilemmas," Flemming Møller Mortensen, health spokesperson for the Social Democrats said, adding that he believed parliament should hold a free vote on the issue with no party lines.

Monika Rubin, health spokesperson for the Moderate Party, said that she wanted to broaden the discussion to also cover shortcomings in the way chronic pain is treated. "This is also about the health care system that we have today. And as it is right now, we need to get better at pain relief,” she said.

Sophie Løhde, Denmark's health minister, who comes from the Liberal Party, told Ritzau in a written comment that she hoped the debate would lead to a discussion in parliament on a "Danish model for a more dignified death"

Denmark needs to examine Canada's experience with euthanasia. The Danish Council of Ethics report corroberates Canada's experience with euthanasia.

Denmark parliament pressured to OK euthanasia

This article was published by Bioedge on May 30, 2023.

By Michael Cook

A proposal to legalise euthanasia in Denmark has broken the threshold of 50,000 signatures to put it before the Danish Parliament for the first time.

Lars Lior Ramsgaard, a nurse from Aarhus, organised the petition. He says that he was inspired by the suffering of his patients and also of his own mother, who wanted to end her life, but was unable to.

In 2013, Ramsgaard said, a poll funded by Palliativt Videncenter, or Palliative Knowledge Centre and Trygfonden, a fund connected to the Tryg insurance company, found that 71 percent of the Danish population backed active euthanasia, while 61 percent of MPs were opposed.

The idea seems to be growing in popularity. In 2018, a similar proposal scored only 8,386 signatures and in 2019, another 1,409. However, the Danish Medical Association is calling on MPs to reject the proposal.

“There are many reasons for this: we do not think that suffering should be managed by killing people; we are afraid of the slippery slope we see in countries where euthanasia has been brought in; and we think one should invest in proper end-of-life palliative care,” said Klaus Klausen, chair of the association’s ethics committee.

The chairman of Denmark’s ethics council, Leif Vestergaard Pedersen, worries that legalisation would send a toxic message to young disabled people. “It is of great importance for young disabled people’s opportunity to live a really good life that they are recognized and respected by society,” he says. “We are going to change that if we say that disabled people can choose to die if they want, because we believe that their lives are not worth living.”

Danish doctor assisted suicide conviction upheld.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A Danish physician who was convicted in 2018 of assisting the suicide of two people and assisting another attempted suicide lost his attempt to overturn his conviction at the European Court of Human Rights.

An article by Molly Quell published by the Courthouse News Service on April 12, 2022 stated that the European Court of Human Rights found that Svend Lings’ 2018 conviction for medically assisted suicide didn’t violate the European Convention on Human Rights. Quell reported:

Lings, the former chief physician at Odense University Hospital in southern Denmark, was given a 40-day prison sentence in 2018, later increased to 60 days, for helping two people die and a third person attempt suicide. The 81-year-old, now-retired physician founded Læger for Aktiv Dødshjælp, or Physicians in Favour of Euthanasia, in 2015, which advocates for legalizing assisted suicide in Denmark.

Following a 2017 radio interview, in which he described how his organization had helped at least 10 people take their own lives, his medical license was revoked and, after further investigation, he was ultimately charged for his involvement in three suicides or attempted suicides.

Quell explains that Lings appealed to the European Convention on Human Rights after losing at the Denmark Supreme Court.

Lings argued before the court in Denmark, as well as before the ECHR, that he had merely been disseminating information about suicide. After his final appeal failed before the Danish Supreme Court, he complained to the ECHR, arguing that under the right to expression, guaranteed by the convention which created the court in 1959, what he did should not be considered illegal.

The seven-judge panel disagreed, writing that Lings “had not only provided guidance, but had also, by specific acts, procured medications for the persons concerned, in the knowledge that it was intended for their suicide.” It was clear, the court wrote, that he had gone beyond simply providing general information about suicide.

Similar to other euthanasia activists, Ling openly challenged the law. He likely hoped that his actions would result in an acquittal, thus striking down the law, instead the Denmark and European courts have upheld his conviction.