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The VE Bulletin Excerpts
A personal view: Hon Sandra Kanck's speech on Ethical issues - euthanasia and palliative care.
The following is an edited edition of a speech given by the Hon. Sandra Kanck, MLC expressing her personal views on voluntary euthanasia and palliative care to œA Forum for Ideas in Religion and Science on 23rd June, 2007.
I am not a Christian, although I was brought up as one, with my grandfather being a Methodist Minister, my father at 85 still preaching once a month as a lay preacher in the Uniting Church, and my mother, at 79, having only last year stopped being a choir conductor and church organist which she had been since she was 15. I am also a strong supporter of palliative care, and when the Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care Bill was going through the parliament in 2005, I kept in very close contact with the Palliative Care Council to let them know how the bill was progressing in the weeks and months it took to get through.
In September last year I called for a substantial increase in funding for palliative care and the development of new service delivery models, given our ageing population. Yet despite that support, a fortnight ago I turned down a request sent to MPs asking us to become members of the Palliative Care Council, and I did so on the basis of emerging antagonism between palliative care and voluntary euthanasia movements. The Judaeo-Christian view underwrites the palliative care movement that emerged out of Christian caring and concern; largely a consequence of the work of Dame Cicely Saunders in the UK. But it appears to me that, because of the Christian link, it will not allow the possibility of consciously ending a human life as a caring act.
I declined to become a member of the Palliative Care Council because increasingly, the palliative care movement is publicly distancing itself from voluntary euthanasia. Yet here are two important points from Palliative Care Australia's policy statement:
Palliative Care Australia acknowledges that while pain and other symptoms can be helped, complete relief of suffering is not always possible, even with optimal palliative care;
Recognises and respects the fact that some people rationally and consistently request deliberate ending of life.
During the prolonged debate on the Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care Bill in 2005, the South Australian Voluntary Euthanasia Society (SAVES) strongly encouraged its members to lobby MPs to support the bill. In the 20 years I have been involved with SAVES, at functions and meetings and on stalls, SAVES has distributed brochures promoting palliative care, and has always advocated for palliative care. However, in February this year, Palliative Care Australia issued a media release from Professor Margaret O'Connor, their President. It made me angry and I will read parts of it.
The current wave of public debate about voluntary euthanasia has presented a very narrow and misleading view of death and dying. The current debate is premature ¦ the absence of any access to care is not an argument to support voluntary euthanasia.
The voluntary euthanasia movement has never proposed such an argument! Professor O'Connor describes the arguments of the voluntary euthanasia movement as being a narrow view and says that:
..a request for hastened death could be a sign of psychosocial distress, or merely a passing comment that is not intended to be heard literally as a death wish..
As someone who has repeatedly said that I would indicate now, through an advance directive of my wishes not to be kept unnecessarily alive if voluntary euthanasia was legal I find Margaret O'Connor's statements to be patronising of those requesting voluntary euthanasia.
The media release is completed with a sentence Palliative Care Australia is the national peak body representing the interests of all people with a life-threatening illness Well, no thank you " I don't want Professor O'Connor trying to represent me if I have a life-threatening illness. She says in the release œthe current debate is premature. So who has given her the power to determine when the time is right for such discussion?
I am a passionate advocate for voluntary euthanasia, and have previously introduced a bill for a referendum on voluntary euthanasia, which lapsed. I will be doing so again so that voters at the next SA election can make a choice on the issue. I have twice introduced my Dignity in Dying Bill to the parliament, only to have it fail each time. On the last occasion the vote was 13 to 8. From that you might infer that support for voluntary euthanasia sits at just under 40%. But MPs are not reflecting the electorate. Earlier this year the five-yearly Newspoll on voluntary euthanasia showed increasingly stronger support all round Australia for voluntary euthanasia, and the strongest was in South Australia with 81% support in the metropolitan area and 84% in the non-metropolitan areas. For people in the voluntary euthanasia movement, palliative care is part of a continuum of care, with voluntary euthanasia being an ultimate option, if needed.
So the advocates of voluntary euthanasia and palliative care are working towards the same outcome " the difference is the time period over which that outcome, a good death, is achieved. The advocates of voluntary euthanasia intend that it be a matter of choice, both patient-initiated and patient-directed. But the palliative care movement denies choice to those patients who wish to hasten their own deaths. But why should that belief system be visited on me, or anyone else who is not an adherent?
In conclusion, when I argue for voluntary euthanasia, I speak of a right to die with dignity. But a majority of parliamentarians and moralists, both in the churches in the palliative care movement, are insisting on an obligation for people to continue living, insisting on an obligation for some to die in pain, and insisting on an obligation for some to die without dignity.
And I ask you: when did living become an obligation?
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