Benefits and Challenges of Legalising Euthanasia – Example of Serbia

Abstract

We are all familiar with the fact that the legal practice of euthanasia is causing great misunderstandings between law scholars on international level. There are a lot of open questions to discuss about, especially those with ethical and moral backgrounds. Mutual consensus is nowhere to be found. Euthanasia questions the right to life at its fundamentals; that is undeniable. Some of the legal systems are acknowledging its existence, while some are advocating against it. Both sides have their positive and negative arguments, there is not yet adequate middle ground. There is a lot of room for finding mutual consensus in the future. Regarding my home country, Serbia, the legal practice of euthanasia, is not officially part of its Criminal Code. Some authors and legal scholars propose that it needs to become part of our positive legal system. The right to life is one of the cornerstones of human rights, and one of the main pro euthanasia arguments is that every individual should have the possibility to choose whether or not he/she will exercise that right. There are a lot of countries that are successfully practicing this practice for years (the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Switzerland e.g.). The facts and hypotheses quoted in the Para. above are going to be main focus of this article. During the writing of this article, I will primarily use the following scientific methods: analytical, critical and parallelism. The article is going to show the positive and negative sides of legalising euthanasia in Serbia. Its main focus is going to revolve around comparison and analysis with countries that have accepted the legal practice of euthanasia as a part of their legal systems. Additionally, this article is going to examine if the decision to legally exercise the right to life should be in the hands of its bearer, especially when there are some excusing circumstances (fatal illness e.g.), and whether Serbia needs to work on legalising it.