The Death of the Victim by Request – Active Euthanasia

Abstract

The existence of society depends on people. Being part of it, both at the foundation and top, human life is the essential value that society should protect. Without life, humanity loses automatically the rest of his prerogatives, so that it is obvious for anyone the importance of guarding this value. A notorious fact is the evolution of society and the existence of new human rights, the current century being one typical for defending and evolving set rights. This is the context where the human right to die came out. Societies were generally reluctant and contrary to its development, but diversity and cultural differences do matter, so some states decided to enact and protect the right to die. This is represented by euthanasia. If the debates on passive euthanasia are no more in the pipeline, being tributaries to patients’ rights, the debates on active euthanasia are ever-growing. More and more states have begun to tolerate this killing method, even though in the reference countries the “dark-side” of this approach seems to prevail. Romania is among the countries that incriminate euthanasia. Although it is regulated under a different name, Article 190 from the Criminal Code envisages the same conditions as euthanasia. Even if the name used for the act creates the illusion that everything starts and depends on the victims consent, a detailed analysis proves that consent is just one of the required conditions next to the existence of a disease or invalidity and the ability to decide as a prerequisite of valid consent.

The issues of this legal text in addition to the resemblance between it and the active form of euthanasia are outlined in this article. As said in the beginning, man – “the supreme creation” needs to be protected, so if the abuses are present, we have the duty to repress them and not to encourage their growth.