KARLSRUHE, Germany, June 25 (UPI) -- Germany's highest court ruled Friday it's legal to cut off life support to a dying person who has given consent.
In the landmark right-to-die ruling, the court overturned the conviction of a lawyer who had advised an elderly comatose woman's family to cut off her feeding tube, the BBC reported.
The woman, in her 70s, had told relatives she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means. She had been in a vegetative state for five years when her daughter removed the feeding tube in 2007.
Hospital staff reinserted the mother's feeding tube over her children's objections. She died of heart failure two weeks later.
Friday's ruling allowed removal of artificial life support with prior consent but does not legalize assisted suicide, punishable by up to five years in prison, the news Web site Spiegel Online reported.
German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said the Karlsruhe federal court ruling clarifies the law on ending life support for terminally ill patients who give consent.
"There can't be forced treatment against a person's will," she said. "This is about the right of self-determination and therefore a question of a life in human dignity until the end."
