[Patient autonomy--legal status in Austria]. / Patientenverfügungen--die Rechtslage in Osterreich.

The so-called living will is also an object of controversy in the Austrian legal literature. Especially the question to what extent this kind of advance directing is binding for the physician, the patient's legal guardian and the court is not yet resolved. Whereas a majority of Austrian legal scholars is of the opinion that an advance refusal of treatment made with capacity simply survives any supervening incapacity, the author proposes that the irreversibly incompetent patient should basically be treated according to what is called an "objective standard".

Regulating "the artificial family": an Austrian compromise.

Finally Austria, too, has come round to a more or less final draft law on assisted reproduction (at the third attempt). It portrays a compromise of liberal and conservative views, which in some points has led to inconsistencies in its logical conception. The donation of semen, for instance, will be permitted, whereas ova donation will be strictly forbidden; the law will allow AID and at the same time prohibit heterologous IVF. The leading principles throughout this law, viz. human dignity, procreative autonomy, and the best interests of the child, surely vital in this context, are sometimes applied to justify regulations -- e.g. those that deny single women access to assisted reproduction -- violating the principle of equality. In this respect, the draft would definitely not bear a closer examination.