Dear FO° Reader,

Whether you live among the sandy beaches of California, the steep capital hills of Washington, DC or the mosaic skies of Switzerland, life is still complicated. Our faith, health, family, job and friends can have a significant impact on the person we are, and the soul or ashes we become after life. 

On November 17, 2025, an old German performing duo, the Kessler twins, died on the same day. At first, we thought little of it, as most of our team had no knowledge of the two performers, but the cause of death sparked an interesting discussion. After 89 years of life, the Kessler sisters chose to die by assisted suicide.

A brief history of assisted suicide

Before diving deeper, it is worth noting that the debate looks very different across Europe. Germany’s Constitutional Court struck down the national ban on assisted suicide in 2020, affirming an individual’s right to a self‑determined death, while Switzerland has long permitted assisted suicide as long as it is done without selfish motives. The Netherlands and Belgium go even further, allowing assisted dying not only for terminal illness but, under strict conditions, for severe psychiatric suffering — even in relatively young adults — something that continues to provoke intense ethical discussion.

Sources:

Is euthanasia legal in the Netherlands? | Government of the Netherlands

Assisted dying: What’s the law in Belgium? | The Brussels Times

By contrast, countries such as France and Italy remain far more resistant. France is still struggling to define a legal pathway, and Italy’s Constitutional Court has only partially opened the door, maintaining significant restrictions rooted in Catholic cultural norms. So, many end up traveling to countries where assisted suicide is legal.

Suicide has always had a certain level of taboo associated with it. Death is cruel enough (for those of us who grew up in a Christian or Western culture, at least), but for someone to inflict it upon themselves adds an extra, painful level of tragedy to it all.

However, medically assisted suicide has a more complicated history. From battlefields to deathbeds, willingly taking your own life to avoid a short existence full of pain and suffering, or sparing others the burden of taking care of someone who knows they won’t make it, has always had different connotations. Across time and around the world, there have been many different views on the subject, with many more still discussed today.

Sources:

Regulating Death: A Brief History of Medical Assistance in Dying | PMC

Assisted suicide | Definition, Euthanasia, Terminology, Arguments, Laws, & Facts | Britannica

The end of life is one of those charged times when some want to still have an active choice and others believe in abandonment to fate. These attitudes stem from very different worldviews and understandings of the meaning of life. For some, suffering is useless and undignified, for others, it could be a gateway to the grace of god. 

If life is sacred and doesn’t belong to the individual but to a supernatural being or force, then suicide, or choosing to end one’s life, is a sin or a crime. If life belongs to the individual, then he/she has the choice to end it. But, of course, things are never so simple as a binary, polarized opposition.

Some physicians and organizations are pushing to avoid the word “suicide” altogether, precisely because of the historical charge it brings into the debate. They are now suggesting some other wording, such as “assisted end of life in dignity.” But, then again, we’d have to realize that dignity is a different thing whether we owe it to ourselves or to an entity outside of ourselves. 

Detail of the crucifixion speaking to Thomas Aquinas, stained glass window, Saint Patrick Church (Columbus, Ohio), Wikipedia

The Church therefore understands “dignity” not as a self-generated entitlement but as the inherent worth that flows from being made imago Dei (“image of God”); true dignity is preserved by bearing suffering in communion with Christ, not by escaping it through a human decision to die.

From a secular, human-centered ethic, the decisive moral claim is the individual’s autonomous sovereignty over one’s own body and future; when a person, after competent deliberation, judges that continued existence would entail intolerable pain and no reasonable prospect of improvement, the rational choice is to exercise the right to a dignified death.

In this view, “dignity” is understood as the capacity to shape one’s own narrative and to avoid unnecessary suffering; the moral responsibility of physicians and societies is therefore to respect that self-determination and to provide the means (within carefully regulated safeguards) for a peaceful, self-chosen end.

Beyond Thomism and European or Western traditions

Many non-Western traditions understood dying not as a catastrophe but as a conscious threshold. Among the Inuit of the Arctic, there are records of elders choosing “self-departure,” freeing themselves from the burdens of life when conditions became untenable, and moving into the realm of ancestors — “there was no scandal of death; that is a Western idea.” 

Literary Hub » Death and Dying in the Canadian Arctic 

In Japan, the legendary custom of Ubasute describes an elderly person being carried to a remote mountain so that they might die in dignity, a ritualized return to nature rather than a hidden shame. 

(PDF) Aging and Abandonment: Obasute Narratives in Contemporary Japan – Research Gate

Another tradition sees death without the same sense of dread: Among many Indigenous communities, including the Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand, dying is interpreted as a return to one’s ancestors. The boundary between the living and the dead is porous, and the dying person is accompanied by family songs, chants and stories that reinforce continuity rather than rupture. Death is not an isolated event but a reintegration, a movement toward a community that extends beyond the visible world.

At Fair Observer, we strive to open space for precisely this plurality of perspectives. End-of-life debates often become polarized because each side speaks from a worldview they assume to be universal. But the meaning of suffering, dignity and choice is lived differently across cultures and spiritual traditions. Our mission is to give voice to these many ways of understanding the human condition — religious, secular, Indigenous, philosophical — so that readers everywhere can see beyond the limits of their own experience. In times of uncertainty, this shared, polyphonic search for meaning is more necessary than ever.

Sources: 

Assisted suicide | Definition, Euthanasia, Terminology, Arguments, Laws, & Facts | Britannica

Assisted suicide – Wikipedia

Kevorkian and assisted death in the United States: The ethical debate drags on but fuels efforts to improve end-of-life care  – PMC

Assisted suicide for Kessler Twins – Bild – Arts Culture and Style – Ansa.it 

https://www.dw.com/en/assisted-suicide-germany-weighs-autonomy-and-ethics/a-66111477 

Assisted suicide: Germany weighs autonomy and ethics – DW – 07/04/2023 

Related readings 
 

Should We Now Have the Right to Die? By Roberta Artemisia Campani | February 05, 2023