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Welcome to DIGNITAS - To live with dignity - To die with dignity, the Swiss self-determination, autonomy and dignity group. We are a not-for-profit member’s society which advocates, educates and supports for improving care and choice in life and at life's end. Our advisory concept of combining palliative care, suicide attempt prevention, advance health care planning and assisted dying offers a basis for decision-making to shape life until the end. Since 1998, we are the spearhead for the worldwide implementation of ‘the last human right’
 
Thank you very much for your support!
We wish everyone joyful festive day and a happy,
successful and above all healthy New Year.
The office of DIGNITAS – To live with dignity – To die with dignity is
closed during the festive days, from 21 December until 5 January.
The basic information at a glance and a ‘click’:
Are you in a crisis?
Do you think about ending it all by taking your own life?
Seek help and talk about it with others:
your loved ones, your doctor, a helpline, us.
Don't do-it-yourself; the risk of failure and being worse off afterwards is high.
Click here for helplines
Constitutional Court of Austria declares
prohibition of assisted suicide unconstitutional
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On 11 December 2020 – just one day after the international day of human rights – the Austrian Constitutional Court in Vienna judged on the constitutional complaint against the prohibition of assistance in suicide and voluntary euthanasia, the case was initiated by "DIGNITAS – To live with dignity – To die with dignity": The prohibition of assistance in suicide (second fact of § 78 of the Austrian Criminal Code) is unconstitutional
>> communiqué by DIGNITAS
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
declares § 217 unconstitutional
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Article 217 of the German Criminal Code "geschäftsmässige Förderung der Selbsttötung", thus a prohibition of professional and dignified advisory work and help for a self-determined end of life, violates the Basic Law of Germany. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe declared § 217 as void.
“DIGNITAS – To live with dignity – To die with dignity” has thus
been successful with its constitutional court complaints.
Freedom-orientated, sensible and legal thinking
on the base of human rights has won.
>> judgment by the Constitutional Court
UK
DIGNITAS – To live with dignity – To die with dignity is a not-for-profit member society and its articles of association make provision for reduction or even complete exemption from having to pay fees for members in modest economic circumstances. However, there are significant other costs, emotional distress and more which people in the UK (and in other countries that still prohibit freedom of choice at life’s end) have to bear. Extensive research has been done on the true costs and consequences, and a report published:
The True Costs - How the UK outsources death to DIGNITAS
>> Full Report << >> Website <<
United States of America
>> "Assisted dying is not the easy way out"
>> The paradox of a government that cavalierly kills people
but prevents assisted suicide
>> The last day of her life - the story of Sandy Bem and her family
South Africa
>> Times Live: 'Give me right to die'
>> DIGNITY South Africa
Biased Research
There has been news on a study about people from abroad going to Switzerland for assisted dying, published in the British Journal of Medical Ethics. The five Swiss charities working for the human right to a life with dignity and a self-determined end of suffering have analysed this study. It has many omissions and errors and contains statements which are wrong, misleading and inflammatory. The study is not representative as the authors did not use all data in Switzerland and they only analysed the years 2008 - 2012. The allegation that the number of people going Switzerland has doubled, bases on a selected analysis. The findings of the study are misleading.
>> Comments on the study "Suicide tourism: a pilot
study on the Swiss phenomenon"
>> Right-to-die organisations criticise public research NFP / NRP 67
>> Commentary in the Journal of Medical Ethics
>> Media: Reports of assisted suicde highly exaggerated
>> Shining a light on the National Research Programme “End of Life” NRP 67
Beware of misleading Media
Sometimes, the media spreads truncated, misleading, hyped and false information about assisted dying and DIGNITAS - To live with dignity - To die with dignity. For example, they make believe that a mentally and physically healthy person could simply pay money and then get 'euthanasia' in a 'clinic' in Switzerland.
This is nonsense, of course.
The facts: In Switzerland, voluntary euthanasia is prohibited. A persons' ending of their own suffering and life by physician-supported accompanied suicide generally takes place at the own flat/house of the person - the way it should be around the world. Access to assisted dying in Switzerland is not a matter of money: DIGNITAS is a not-for-profit association which grants reduction and exemption of paying costs, if need be. It is all a matter of of paperwork, patience, determination and responsibility, of a competent adult.
Don’t buy and don’t believe such 'news', mainly spread by the tabloids.
All these media companies intend is to increase their profit by selling more
of their print / TV / online stuff and gain profitable advertisement contracts.
As said George Bernard Shaw, in "The Doctor’s Dilemma" (1906), act IV:
" . . . for a newspaper, not having to act on its descriptions and reports,
but only to sell them to idly curious people, has nothing but honor to lose
by inaccuracy and unveracity . . .".
There is one reliable source of information from and about
DIGNITAS - To live with dignity - To die with dignity: this website
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