April 28, the Hungarian Constitutional Court’s rejection of a law suit to legalize euthanasia.
Court President Janos Nemeth said "euthanasia has only been made legal recently in Belgium, in the Netherlands and in a state in the United States" and that Hungary’s laws should not be changed.
He added that terminally ill patients can already refuse medical care if they wish as the country has allowed a passive form of euthanasia since 1997. "The current state of affairs is not unconstitutional," Nemeth said in a statement.
"This is a revolutionary ruling," explained the Catholic Bishop of the Hungarian Armed Forces, Tamas Szabo in an interview with BosNewsLife.
LONG DEBATE
The court’s decision followed a decade long debate in the former Communist country that began in earnest in 1993 when Gyorgyi Binder drowned her 11-year old daughter in a bathtub to end the child’s suffering of an incurable disease.
She was initially handed a two-year suspended sentence, but the supreme court overturned the decision, saying that Binder had to go to jail for two years for manslaughter. Then-President Arpad Goncz used his powers to accord mercy to Binder and suspended the sentence.
Following that case, constitutional jurist Albert Takacs and lawyer Ildiko Kmetty sued the Constitutional Court to rule that such cases should not be treated as manslaughter. Monday’s ruling however re-enforced the opinion that euthanasia should be punished.
ABORTION NEXT?
"I hope this will set a precedent for other laws we want to see changed, such as abortion," said Bishop Szabo. He suggested it could end the apparent death culture in post Communist Hungary, where the Catholic Church is the largest domination.
"Christianity knows the meaning of suffering. Ofcourse it is not a pleasant thing…but even in the perspective of the suffering of Jesus Christ, Christianity is able to attribute a value to suffering," he said.
