It’s OK for us, isn’t it? Us fit, healthy, middle-aged libertarians, who bang on about the right to die as a convenient lifestyle choice, secure in the knowledge that it’s all in the distant future, like equity release or a good annuity.

The people we should really feel sorry for are those for whom the Dignitas clinic offers comfort. The restrictions, or closure, will impact most of all on those struggling with constant pain or a decreasing loss of motor skills, who in the long wastes of the night take comfort from the fact that Switzerland is only a flight away.

They are the people who know that if things become too unbearable next week they can act. For them, knowing that there is a way out, even if they don’t take it, brings relief. And what black irony it is, in a world where one can buy a thousand brands of fridge, or order a zillion differing specifications on a new car, that any organised choice about how to end our lives is being removed from us? Just the most important consumer decision of the lot, the ultimate act of autonomy, denied to us, that’s all.

The Swiss, embarrassed by the label of death tourism, are threatening the only humane option for a calm, rational, organised death. In doing so, they are denying the tide of modern life.

The right to a good death exists and must be met. It is demanded by an educated, realistic society no longer bound by religious superstitions about the end of life.

In the absence of Dignitas, the infirm and the dying will find other ways to achieve it. The sadness is that this process would be made much more difficult, lonely and covert for individuals already suffering greatly.

So much, one might say, for respecting human rights.

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