Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf says she wants the government to rethink its proposal to tighten legislation on assisted suicide.
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Widmer-Schlumpf, in a SonntagsZeitung newspaper interview, said assisted suicide should not only be limited to the terminally ill who are close to death.
In October last year, the justice minister presented two draft bills, one of which foresees an outright ban on right-to-die organisations such as Exit or Dignitas.
The other bill would introduce severe restrictions, including the need for two doctor’s certificates to prove that a patient is suffering from an incurable and probably fatal illness and that patients are making an informed decision to end their lives.
The aim of the regulations is to limit so called “death tourism”.
However, the proposals have been widely criticised, and not only by the right-to-die organisations.
All parties represented in government, with the exception of the centre-right Christian Democrats, have said the existing laws allowing assisted suicide and passive euthanasia (“mercy killing”) are sufficient.
And the National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics (NEK) said the chronically ill should have access to assisted suicide.
Assisted suicide has been allowed in Switzerland since the 1940s if performed by someone who has no vested interest in the death. About 400 people committed assisted suicide in Switzerland in 2007 – a third of them came from Germany and Britain.
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Expert slams plans to curb assisted suicide
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Frank Petermann, an expert in medical law in St Gallen, tells swissinfo.ch that the planned regulations go against human rights and will fail to prevent people from travelling to Switzerland to die. Right-to-die organisations have also been quick to dismiss the government plans as outdated and patronising. Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf presented two draft bills…
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Peter and Penelope Duff, aged 80 and 70 respectively, had both been suffering from cancer. They kept secret their plans to travel to the Dignitas clinic near Zurich, where they received help with assisted suicide. The couple died on February 27. They had told friends and neighbours they were moving out of their home in…
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Swiss surgeon Jérôme Sobel, president of the Swiss assisted suicide organisation Exit, talks to swissinfo about the realities of assisted death in Switzerland and Europe. Craig Ewert, a 59-year-old motor neurone disease sufferer from Harrogate, Britain, died in Switzerland in 2006, having been helped by the controversial charity Dignitas. Last week television channel Sky News…
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Pictures from the medical history archives at Zurich University, show what it was like to study medicine in the old days. They were displayed as part of the university’s 175th anniversary celebrations in 2008. (All photos from the medical history archive).
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.