Human life starts at conception and ends at death. It is not up to people to determine the end of life. Secondly any regulation of assistance to suicide by the state is an illogicality, as EVP MP Ruedi Aeschbacher (Kanton of Zurich) rhetorically asked: "The state protects life above all - and at the same time it should regulate the conduct of those, that help people to commit suicide?" For Aeschbacher hence concludes: "Forbidding the assistance to suicide is the only consistent stance." During the summer session he handed in a motion, with which he wanted to scrap the three words <<on egoistic grounds>> in article 115 of the penal code. By doing so assistance to suicide would be forbidden in any case.

A position paper with a summary of results summarizes the positions and activities of the EVP with regard to assistance to suicide. Parallel to forbidding assistance to suicide, the supply of palliative care should be massively increased.

Palliative care makes it possible to die in a worthy fashion without unbeareble physical and mental illnesses.Experience learns that quality of life increases significantly, when patients are sufficiently taken palliative care of. It often makes the fear of dying and the wish to die go away.

When forbidding assistance to suicide on the federal level would prove not to be possible, the EVP would do the following suggestions:

• Assistance to suicide can only go unpenalized, when the persons or organisations, assisting to the suicide, do not profit form it financially in any way.
• Assistance to suicide should be forbidden, when it concerns foreign nationals that do not live in Switzerland.

The EVP is disappointed about the stance of the CVP (Christian People's Party), that has announced today that assistance to suicide should remain legal. The EVP is of the opinion that organisations that provide assistance to suicide, like Dignitas, do not even have any support among the population and are not founded in society. The real Swiss tradition is only done right by, with palliative care, rather than with quick death 'sollution' of suicide assistance.

Press statement of the EVP (Evangelical People's party) Zurich, August 14, 2008

Linked documents

Title	Filesize	MIME-type
2008_sterbehilfe_positionspapier_leistungsausweis_02	59.1 kB	application/pdf
m2008_37d_beihilfe_zum_suizid	102.6 kB	application/pdf