Swiss Consider Revising Euthanasia Laws

Love and Peace| Swiss organization Dignitas and its founder, Ludwig Minelli, are the leading group assisting non-Swiss citizens to commit suicide. Mr Minelli argues that each person has a right to end their own lives as the truly human choice, not its opposite demand that people be kept alive at any and all costs, regardless of their physical and mental conditions. Minelli argues that even healthy people have a right to die.

While Dignitas helps comparatively few foreigners, Swiss legislators are taking another look at current laws, trying to discourage a future ‘suicide tourism’ industry. Oregon is the only state in the US with assisted suicide is legal. There a resident must be certified to die within six months.

The U.K., which has restrictive laws on euthanasia, was forced in a court case last fall to clarify whether it would prosecute Britons who help family members make the trip to Switzerland to die. (It won’t.) Luxembourg legalized euthanasia last year. Activists in Belgium and the Netherlands are pushing to broaden the group of patients who can avail themselves of assisted suicide to the elderly, minors and chronically ill. via Wall Street Journal