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’
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.
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
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.
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
'People who have done nothing wrong except contract an illness deserve more than a government whose bravery extends no further than to turn a blind eye.'
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.
Quite often, 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 pay money and then get 'euthanasia' in a 'clinic' in Switzerland.
This is complete nonsense, of course.
The facts: In Switzerland, voluntary euthanasia is prohibited. A persons' ending of his or her own suffering and life by 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 'news', mainly spread by the tabloids. All that 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 only one reliable source of information from and about DIGNITAS - To live with dignity - To die with dignity: this website
Want to know more?
Get informed!
Read the FAQ-section (Link) on our website and take a look at the speeches (Link).
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...our cause, join us.
To become a member of DIGNITAS, you need to first read our info-brochure very carefully and then fill out the binding "declaration of membership" and send it off to us. >> more
