ALL
I WANT IS THE RIGHT TO SAY WHEN
The following article by Tony Baker is from The Advertiser of
11 July 1997
All I want is the option. Assuming, and it is a quite reasonable assumption,
that I am diagnosed as having a terminal illness, I want to have on my
person or safely stored at home a prescription for such a quantity of drugs
that will guarantee my death. I want the law to ensure that if, with my
full knowledge and at my request, Lili Baker helps me that she will not
be open to any kind of sanction.
I am not at all sure that I want a doctor with a death machine to be
present though I can quite see the value of this in certain circumstances.
As - happily in my view - the so-called euthanasia debate is revived,
courtesy of the SA Parliament, it is perhaps worth stating these layman's
basics. As of today I am having far too much fun to even contemplate crossing
King William St without looking carefully both ways. But we all know the
nasty tricks fate can have in store.
To me the issue is the ultimate but really quite simple one of choice
and the individual's sovereignty. It is argued that suicide cannot be a
rational decision. That, by definition, to be suicidal is to be clinically
depressed. That is doubtless true in many cases. However, in an age of
lingering and hideous cancers and of AIDS, I would argue differently. Indeed,
I would say there are circumstances when death itself is a treatment option.
Far from being irrational, to want to die when you are so ill that all
that remains is further suffering and humiliation becomes a definition
of rationality.
I cannot remember a time when I was angrier about an Australian political
action than Federal Parliament's wicked (I choose my word advisedly) decision
to overturn the Northern Territory law. I took it as a personal affront.
What a shining contrast was the approach of the Liberal Angus Redford in
the SA Legislative Council: "I have trouble understanding why my conscience,
simply because I am elected to this place, is better than anyone else's".
It seems to me almost incredible that the level of compassion we routinely
extend to animals should be denied to ourselves. The other things of which
I am confident is that most of you feel the same way, too. It is not only
that, around the world, opinion polls consistently show 60 to 70 per cent
support for hastened death in some form. When I last wrote on this subject,
at the height of the federal Parliament uproar, I received an unprecedented
number of letters with virtually unanimous support.
Ideally I shall not go at all. However, since the odds seem to be distinctly
against the imminent discovery of immortality juice, I shall have to hope
for second best.
This I think would be that, while enjoying the love of a good woman
(Mrs B naturally), on a sunlit evening after a long lunch, a half-empty
bottle of champagne in the ice bucket, the scent of roses in the air and
Mozart in the background, the lights suddenly go out.
In descending order I should hope to find the ideal hospice being visited
by chums, with pain kept at bay thanks to the attentions of saintly and
expert staff. But, just in case, despite their sanctity and expertise,
they cannot keep the pain and distress at bay, I want to be able to reach
for that prescription and politely take my leave.
I want the option. My choice. Isn't that what civilisation is supposed
to be all about?
|
