Swiss abroad retain assisted suicide option

EXIT members rejected a proposal to stop its services at Swiss borders. Keystone / Peter Komka

Swiss people living abroad will still be able to use the services of assisted suicide organisation EXIT after members rejected a proposal to restrict its activities to within Switzerland.

In August last year, the group warned that legal hurdles to euthanasia in other countries were making it increasingly difficult to offer its services to people outside of Switzerland. At the time, some 2,600 EXIT members lived abroad.

The organisation asked members if it should stop its services at Swiss borders. But according to the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper, it has shelved this idea after receiving too much negative feedback.

Some 1,282 seriously ill people ended their lives using EXIT last year. The newspaper article said this included at least ten people living abroad.

Switzerland’s other assisted suicide organisation, Dignitas, does not exclude offering its services abroad.

Swiss law tolerates assisted suicide when patients commit the act themselves and helpers have no vested interest in their death. Assisted suicide has been legal in the country since the 1940s.