Exit is Zurich’s biggest assisted suicide organisation Voters in Zurich, Switzerland, have rejected proposed bans on assisted suicide and “suicide tourism”, early projections suggest.
The projections showed voters had heavily turned down both initiatives, Swiss news agency SDA reported.
About 200 people commit assisted suicide each year in Zurich, including many foreign visitors.
It has been legal in Switzerland since 1941 if performed by a non-physician with no vested interest in the death.
Assistance can be provided only in a passive way, such as by providing drugs. Active assistance – helping a person to take or administer a product – is prohibited.
While opinion polls indicated that most Swiss were in favour of assisted suicide, they also suggested that many are against what has become known as suicide tourism.
Residents are uneasy that so many citizens from Germany, France and other nations are coming to die in Switzerland because the practice remains illegal abroad.
One local organisation, Dignitas, says it has helped more than 1,000 foreigners to take their own lives.
Another group, Exit, will only help those who are permanently resident in the country – saying the process takes time, and much counselling for both patients and relatives.
Polls indicate the majority of Swiss are in favour of the right to assisted suicide The referendum offered a proposal to limit suicide tourism, by imposing a residency requirement of at least one year in the Zurich area in order to qualify for the service.
It was backed by two conservative political parties, the Evangelical People’s Party and the Federal Democratic Union.
But the major parties of the left and right, including the Swiss People’s Party and the Social Democratic Party, had called on their supporters to vote against both motions.
The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes, in Geneva, says the size of the vote against a ban on assisted suicide reflects the widely held belief among the Swiss that is their individual right to decide when and how to die.
Their rejection of the proposal to limit assisted suicide to those living in Zurich shows that concerns about suicide tourism carry less weight with voters than their conviction that the right to die is universal, our correspondent says.
But the debate in Switzerland will continue, she adds. Polls show voters do want clearer national legislation setting out conditions under which assisted suicide is permitted.
The Swiss government is planning to revise the country’s federal laws on assisted suicide.
It has said it is looking to make sure it was used only as a last resort by the terminally ill, and to limit suicide tourism.
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