Between promoting and not punishing assisted suicide.
Between promoting and not punishing assisted suicide.
In Britain as in France, there is a big misconception on assisted suicide as it is legalized and openly practiced in Switzerland.
Their proponents view it as a right, some sort of extension of the Welfare State, and laws are proposed to this effect with disturbing missionary zeal (Archbishop Cranmer has a particularly crass example by, of all people, a Canon of the Church of England: http://goo.gl/JIAoAV).
The Swiss Criminal Code is, rightfully, completely different, based on a double negative:
Art. 115 (http://goo.gl/EWRq0N)
Inciting and assisting suicide
Any person who for selfish motives incites or assists another to commit or attempt to commit suicide is, if that other person thereafter commits or attempts to commit suicide, liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding five years (…).
Assisting suicide is prohibited if based on selfish motives. It’s only a lack of these that make assisting suicide non punishable, and it seems to me very different from promoting suicide in the law and the political discourse.
As often, this misconception is now coming back to Switzerland and there are talks of changing the law to give it a positive twist…
If «dying with dignity» is legalised, soon it will be expected
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