Daily Archives: May 17, 2017

Updated May 16, 2017 09:27:27

New South Wales is a step closer to allowing terminally ill people to voluntarily end their lives, with a draft bill with cross-party support being released today.

The Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill has been drafted by a parliamentary working group made up of members from the Coalition, Labor, Greens and an independent.

The draft bill would give a person over the age of 25 the right to request assistance from a medical practitioner to end their life.

They must be experiencing severe pain or physical incapacity, and be likely to die within 12 months.

Patients must be assessed by their primary doctor, then a specialist, as well as a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Patients would then be allowed to self-administer a lethal substance to end their lives. They may also be assisted by a medical practitioner or nominated person.

The process would include a cooling-off period of 48 hours, which starts once a request for assistance certificate has been completed.

The bill would also enable a close relative of the patient to apply to the Supreme Court for a judicial review.

Nationals MP Trevor Khan said it was a cautious bill with "a range of safeguards to meet the inevitable criticisms that a bill such as this will face when it's introduced into Parliament".

"I'm expecting that we'll be treated thoughtfully and that the issue, as a whole, will be free of the politics that can infest these debates," he said.

He said he would urge his parliamentary colleagues to think of their own family members and vote with their conscience.

Mr Khan said assisted-dying legislation had significant public support.

"The overwhelming majority of Australians and people who live in NSW want some action on this subject," he said.

Labor MP Lynda Voltz said politicians needed to listen to community support for end-of-life legislation.

"I go and walk my dog and people talk to me about it, I go out to community meetings and people talk about it," she said.

"There is a lot of community support out there for a bill of this nature and parliaments can no longer stick their head in the sand and ignore that community expectation."

Ms Voltz said it had taken about 12 months to create a draft bill "that meets the community's expectations, legal expectations and medical expectations".

The legislation will face a conscience vote when it's finalised and then introduced to State Parliament.

Topics: state-parliament, euthanasia, nsw, sydney-2000

First posted May 16, 2017 08:43:31

Go here to see the original:

Euthanasia debate: NSW Parliament to consider drafted legislation on assisted dying - ABC Online

The right to end one's life when pain and immobility become unbearable has seen many swords clash during the past decades.

To delve deeper into this issue, I asked 18 students from the University of Malta and noted the arguments by the Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Agius, Dean of the Faculty of Theology, and Pierre Mallia, Professor of Family Medicine, who both lecture at the University, during an interview on Campus FM.*

Students defined euthanasia as: the killing of seriously-ill patients to be relieved from pain; a patient's right to end his life painlessly; mercy killing; the withdrawal of treatment; and assisted suicide.

Euthanasia, however, holds a wider definition. Prof. Mallia defined it as 'voluntary homicide', generally referring to a sick person but not necessarily one close to death. He made a net distinction between active euthanasia: when the physician helps end the patient's life with intended means; and passive euthanasia: when treatment is purposely withheld to let the patient die.

Prof. Agius noted the difference between killing and letting die, saying that only the first action is considered as euthanasia and not "when a patient refuses to take treatment". When I asked students about this, four agreed with Prof. Agius, saying that you are just letting nature take its course. Six claimed to be both a form of euthanasia or else an indirect method.

Prof. Mallia said that although when one speaks of such moral rights, one tends to incorporate the importance of autonomy, one cannot oblige society to end one's life, especially in cases of heartbreak or just because you got ill. So, when can euthanasia be justified? Thirteen of the students felt that euthanasia can only be justified when the person's life deteriorates, when not able to live independently and when one loses complete control of one's body. Five said that ending a life can never be justified because each and every human life is precious, invaluable and humans don't have authority over it.

Mallia referred to the pre-legality state, observing that Parliament is trying to turn ethics into statistics, which is impossible, because the passing of a law doesn't depend on whether the law is morally right or wrong; rather on the agreement reached by MPs.

According to Agius, one should look into the social conditions which induce a person to consider such a step that goes against the fundamental right to live. What induces a person to opt for euthanasia? Students listed endless pain, concern for others such as concern of being a burden to one's family, lack of hope, lack of support from relatives and friends and lack of understanding of value of life.

Seven students disagreed with the fact that the right to live and the right to die are contradictory, insisting that they are similar human rights which every person should be entitled to. One rejected euthanasia as a right, claiming that we are not the master of our lives. Eight agreed while two said that life should be protected at all times; otherwise the right to live would be meaningless. The rest were undecided.

In order to analyse what leads people to want to take their own lives, one ought to consider palliative as well as spiritual care, Agius said. Out of 18 students, 16 agreed with Agius, that euthanasia should be a last resort after spiritual/emotional support. Also, that authorities should make sure people who are giving such support are competent, well-trained, pro-life and of good morals. The rest said it's difficult once a person has made up his mind.

I asked the students if the moral implications are any different between an old person and a child/teenager/young adult who opts for this procedure. Seven said that age should not make any difference. One said it's true that a young person is seen as the one who has a longer future but if life was extended to both, they might end up with a positive outcome i.e. changing someone else's life or giving a life-changing contribution to society. Five students said that there is a difference because while the old person lived his/her life, the young one is still at the beginning of life.

When it comes to the effects on the physician, students mentioned guilt, especially if a bond has been created with the patient. Others said it depends on the physician's values - especially spirituality - because if he/she is pro-life, shame might ensue for having assisted in the procedure. Four students disagreed that such attached emotions could follow since, for physicians, they encounter such losses while others might be blinded by its lucrative side.

So, should euthanasia become legal or not? Apart from the four students that responded "undecided", the number was even. Seven agreed to the extent that strict regulations should be applied, for example, when the patient is in a good state of mind, when it's the patient's decision and when the patient is terminally ill. The other seven students disagreed, saying that authorities cannot keep referring to themselves as 'Christians' if they opt to go against the fundamental and core values of Christianity. One said that with the improvement of medicine, euthanasia should not be considered.

Ten students were concerned that if euthanasia is legalized, we would be running the risk of people abusing of such an option and sick people will opt for the easy way out i.e. refuse treatment. Three said this depends on the emotional support the patient receives. The rest were undecided.

"If we want to make our island more merciful and be first in Europe, we have to be the country where we give the most palliative care and whoever will be found in this situation wouldn't need to ask for euthanasia because we have psychological, emotional, spiritual support and a good system where we give these patients their dignity," Agius added.

*The programme, 'Mhux l-aar Kelma', led by the Rev. Dr Joe Borg and Professor Maryanne Lauri is broadcast on Campus FM. 103.7

Excerpt from:

Is euthanasia assisted suicide? - Malta Independent Online

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled, Parliament has legislated and provinces have set up new systems. For most Canadians the assisted suicide debate is last years news story. But Cardinal Gerhard Mller, head of the Catholic Churchs theological watchdog-agency, begs to differ.

We shall prevail, Mller told an audience of bioethicists, theologians, doctors and nurses at Torontos St. Michaels Cathedral May 15.

The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called Canadas turn to legalized euthanasia tragic.

Euthanasia not only constitutes a grave wrong in itself, but its legalization creates toxic and deadly social pathologies that disproportionately afflict the weakest members of society, Mller declared.

The cardinal was in Toronto to deliver the keynote address at a Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute conference dedicated to the conscience rights of health care professionals. Muller urged members of the CCBI to persuade Canadian citizens to take the necessary steps to reverse the dangerous legal error of your Supreme Court and Parliament, and in the meantime, to protect the rights of conscience of health care providers who refuse to take the lives of those that they have sworn to treat and comfort.

Fr. Leo Walsh, who heads up the CCBI branch at Assumption University in Windsor, Ont., called the cardinals address dramatically important.

While its true that those who oppose physician-assisted death have lost the debate up to this point and the law is unlikely to change soon, that doesnt mean the debate is over, Walsh said.

We dont give up, he said. We have to keep pushing it. We have to invite them (politicians and assisted suicide advocates) to see this good.

In bringing Mller in to argue against legalized euthanasia, the CCBI is tapping a deep well of Catholic thinking and the highest authority on Catholic teaching. In a recent book-length interview, the cardinal argues for a brand of theology that isnt satisfied with merely internal Church arguments. Mller believes Catholics have something to say and must say it publicly, whether its popular or not.

Amid so much irrationality and frivolity, we must seek out the enemy nihilism, agnosticism and skepticism so widespread in our society because of its loss of realism and humanity and, with the help of the riches of the magisterium of the Church, fight it systematically, Mller said in The Cardinal Mller Report, a 2016 volume from the American Catholic publisher Ignatius Press. Everything is reinvented, anything goes. In society, we can only expect the wind that blows us this way and that. In society, we can only seek the comfort of being always on the side of the majority and not that of the brave witness we bear by swimming against the current when we must.

The former bishop of Regensburg, Germany, Mller began his priestly life as an academic expert on Protestant theologian and Second World War martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He is a personal friend of Pope Benedict XVI, who first appointed him to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Mller is the founder of the Pope Benedict XVI Institute in Regensburg charged with publishing the complete works of Joseph Ratzinger.

The next step for Canadians who oppose medicalized killing must be to legally protect the conscience rights of doctors who refuse to refer their patients on to medical aid in dying (MAID) assessments, Mller said.

No one who trains and takes an oath to care for the sick should be pressed into ending the lives of the very people that they have promised to serve, Mller told about 200 people who had gathered at St. Michaels Cathedral for evening prayer, followed by the cardinals address.

Doctors who regard sending their patients on to be assessed for euthanasia as tantamount to signing their death warrant arent asking for an exemption to an otherwise legitimate regime based on unique and particular beliefs or values, Mller said.

Refusal to engage in euthanasia represents basic fidelity to the very medical art that the physician professes, he said. To compel a doctor to participate in any manner in euthanasia is to force him to cease being a doctor and to betray the very profession to which he has given his life.

Any law that forces a physician to act against what he knows to be the most basic good of the patient the preservation of his very life either directly or indirectly, is unjust.

The rest is here:

'Tragic' euthanasia law must be fought, Cardinal Mller tells Canadian audience - The Catholic Register

NewsBusters (blog)

Lifetime's Pro-Euthanasia Drama Doctor Admits Joy of Killing NewsBusters (blog) Sunday night's episode of Lifetime's Mary Kills People, Raised by Wolves, continued to praise Mary for her lethal mission despite her and her partner's doubts. The episode also revealed that Mary helped her mother commit suicide when she was only 16.

More here:

Lifetime's Pro-Euthanasia Drama Doctor Admits Joy of Killing - NewsBusters (blog)