Dignitas UK membership increases by 24% as assisted death approaches in Scotland
UK membership of Dignitas, the Swiss assisted dying association, has risen to 1,900 people – up 24% by 2023 – as an assisted dying bill goes before the Scottish Parliament.
People from Britain now make up the second largest group to join the organisation, which is based near Zurich and helps people commit suicide. The largest group currently consists of Germans, although after a court ruling in 2020 they can now receive help to end their lives at home.
Among the new British Dignitas members is TV presenter Esther Rantzen, who announced her intention to become a member last December. She has lung cancer and called for legalization in Britain, saying: “Maybe I’ll go to Zurich.”
Dignitas said the jump was partly due to increasing press coverage and the aging of the baby boomer generation, which is “accustomed to self-determination and making individual choices for their own lives, which of course also includes the end of life”.
It was also said that the British government and parliament have been dragging their feet for a long time and such people are reaching out to places where they feel they are being taken more seriously. Labor leader Keir Starmer has said he will allow a free vote in the next parliament if he becomes prime minister.
The latest annual figures shows that in 2023, forty people from Great Britain will have taken their own lives at Dignitas – the highest level since 2019. According to the organization, the number of Britons who have died with the help of Dignitas doctors since its founding in 1998 comes to 571 .
Helping someone end their own life remains a criminal offense in Britain, while it is legal in ten US states, Canada, most of Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Austria, Ecuador, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Alistair Thompson, spokesperson for Make sure you don’t killwhich is campaigning against the legalization of assisted dying, said the rise in membership was partly driven by the widening view that the NHS was in crisis, that the hospice movement was struggling financially and that “we are still not there succeed in ensuring the availability of good quality palliative care”.
Opponents argue that legalization could lead to vulnerable people being forced to take their own lives. But polls consistently show that around 70% of the public support a change in the law limited to terminally ill adults and with strict controls. Paola Marra, 53, took her own life in Dignitas last week after receiving a terminal diagnosis of colon cancer. Before traveling alone from London to Switzerland, she told the Guardian: “I think it’s really unfair that I can’t do it here.”
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, which is campaigning for legalisation, said: “It is clear that under the blanket ban on assisted dying we are outsourcing compassion to Switzerland. Paola Marra, who shared her story so powerfully to help all who came after her, was forced to die alone abroad for fear of incriminating her loved ones.”
A bill to allow assisted dying for terminally ill adults in Scotland will be formally published on Thursday. It will be examined in committee before an initial vote by Holyrood’s devolved parliament.
Helping someone commit suicide in Scotland can currently be prosecuted as a crime. But if the new bill is passed, it would allow terminally ill people to get help taking their own lives within the law for the first time in Britain. There are also moves towards limited legalization in Jersey and the Isle of Man.
Congratulating the Scottish Parliament on introducing the bill, Rantzen said: “The current law is cruel, complicated and causes terrible suffering to vulnerable people. I have received dozens of letters from people describing the painful deaths of those they loved. This is literally a matter of life and death, and I believe terminally ill patients like me need and deserve the right to choose this option when our lives become unbearable.”