REFLECTIONS ON EUTHANASIA
By Brian Harradine
At 10.05 pm on 25 May 1995, 13 of the 25 members of the
Northern
Territory Assembly voted to support a euthanasia bill
strangely
titled the Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill. For the
first time in the
world, the deliberate and intentional killing of one
innocent adult
human being by another was legalised by an act of
parliament.
Stripped of all its euphemism, euthanasia occurs when the
doctor
and not the illness kills the patient. At a time when
civilised
countries throughout the world are abolishing the death
penalty,
politicians have instituted a licence to kill. At a time
when political,
medical and community concern about suicide abounds, the
Northern
Territory Assembly has legalised assisted suicide and
promoted a
culture of death.
True compassion means caring for and suffering with
another person
- not putting that person to death. In this utilitarian,
excessively
individualist and hedonistic society, the value of
suffering for
personal growth and for the opportunity to love and serve
is ignored.
The experience of having ones wile die in ones arms of
cancer and
ones mother, a long time Alzheimer's patient, also die in
ones arms
confirms the knowledge that life is for more than this
earth. The
person with whom life and love have been intimately
shared does not
cease to exist.
We all need to understand the difference between
euthanasia and
the undoubted right of a terminally ill patient to
refuse
overburdensome and disproportionate medical
treatment.
Euthanasia should not be confused with measures to
relieve pain
such as the responsible use of analgesics. Unfortunately
if
euthanasia becomes law, the demand for resources needed
for good
palliative care will be stifled.
Just a few weeks ago, an aged care nursing sister in
Hobart told me
that even now her patients ask her if they are being a
burden to look
after. How much worse will they feel if euthanasia
legislation is
enacted? Many of them will feel pressured to make a
deadly choice
which should be out of the question. They really do need
to feel
cared for, wanted and needed.
Former South Australian governor Sir Mark Oliphant told
the ABC's
A.M program recently that "there are too many people
who are now
no longer part of humanity, as it were, still being kept
alive in homes
and even in their own homes by their relatives". He
told of a scientist
friend who "should be dead, and he's not. He just
loves to be alive
and to be a damned nuisance to all his friends and
relatives. I think
he's cluttering up the world at a time when he should
not." Will it
become a crime to love life and not want to be forced to
leave it?
We have seen internationally just how slippery the
slippery slope can
be. In Holland judge made law permits
"voluntary" euthanasia, and
in 1990 of the 10,558 incidents of euthanasia, 5,824 were
performed
without the patient's consent. It is not only the
physically sick who
are being killed. Last year the Dutch Supreme Court ruled
that a
psychiatrist had acted properly in prescribing and
supervising the
death by overdose of a woman suffering depression from a
marriage
breakup and the loss of 2 children.
Who will be affected most by the decision of the 13 NT
Politicians? I
believe it will be the marginalised, the sick, frail aged
and those who
lack self-esteem. And not just in the Northern Territory
- the push
for euthanasia through all States has been buoyed by this
decision.
The Northern Territory legislation threatens to undermine
the
cornerstone of society, which depends on the inalienable
nature of
the right to life of every individual human being. This
inalienable
right was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights
agreed to by the international community following the
Nazi horrors.
On that inalienability rest the edifice of laws which
seek to protect
the lives of human beings. From that inalienability flows
the human
solidarity needed to achieve justice for all - the
reverse of legislation
whereby the value of life is eclipsed and a culture of
death is
inculcated.
The Federal Parliament has a duty to render that
legislation
inoperable by passing the Euthanasia Laws Bill introduced
by Mr
Andrews.
11 October 1996
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