SAVES is not affiliated with Exit International / Dr Philip Nitschke and opposes the public availability of a 'peaceful pill'.

Frances firstly conveyed that she was thrilled at the turnout for the Shirley Nolan Day Rally, and expressed her gratitude to Cathi Tucker, research liaison officer for Hon Sandra Kanck, for her wonderful help, as well as to the many others who assisted in so many ways. There was radio, TV and newspaper publicity due to the number of people who attended. Frances said that it is vital to maintain and build on this as it is the one focus day of the year.

Frances also called for donations to the society to help defray the costs of holding the two Awareness Days in Rundle Mall each year. The importance of completing advance directives was also reinforced, as was the need to write to local MPs. Ongoing correspondence with the AMA, Palliative Care Australia and the SA Palliative Care Council were also discussed, as was the AMA national forum in which 16 doctors had been signatories to a letter supporting a neutral position by the AMA on voluntary euthanasia.

Frances advised the audience that, on the international scene, a landmark High Court ruling in Britain guaranteed that a husband would not face criminal charges related to escorting his terminally ill wife to Switzerland for an assisted death. In Oregon a terminally ill patient who ends his or her life under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act will have this act referred to as ‘physician-assisted death’ instead of suicide. The one word change had been sought by advocates of the landmark state law that allows dying patients to ask their doctors to provide medication for self-administration. The act as spelled out in Oregon law ‘shall not, for any purpose, constitute suicide, mercy-killing or homicide under the law’.

The Netherlands voluntary euthanasia society NVVE has clarified that people do not have access to euthanasia as a right, but they are entitled to make a request. The society has also designed a medal that people can wear around their necks to state that they do not want to be resuscitated. (Legal clarification as to this possibility in SA has established that it would not be considered…ed.). In Kyodo Japan guidelines have been drafted setting rules for medical facilities to stop treatment of patients who are in the terminal stage of a terminal illness or have no chance of recovery from serious diseases such as cancer. Active voluntary euthanasia is still banned.

Frances also advised that Colombia is the only country in Latin America where voluntary euthanasia is not outlawed. It became permissible in 1997 when the country’s highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court, ruled that a person might choose to end their life and that doctors could not be prosecuted for helping.

The meeting concluded with a viewing of a Netherlands video "Live and let die".