The extent to which Australia has in a very short period of time seen the "slippery slope" of extended euthanasia and assisted suicide from what was originally intended is exposed in a recently released report.
The <a href="https://bioethics.org.uk/research/euthanasia-assisted-suicide-papers/wrong-side-of-the-world-the-misplaced-reliance-on-australia-in-the-uk-debate-on-assisted-dying/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">new briefing paper</mark></a> on Australia's experience by Professor David Albert Jones, bioethicist and director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, also emphasises how this trend in Australia has implications for the ongoing debate and legislative push for bringing assisted suicide into the UK and Ireland.
This is because, the Anscombe Bioethics Centre explains, committees examining euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS) bills in both the Westminster and Holyrood parliaments have chosen to focus on Australia’s experiences with EAS, rather than on North America (e.g. Oregon and Canada) or on Europe (e.g. Belgium and the Netherlands), which collectively have had more experience of EAS.
"I hope this report will open people’s eyes as to just how quickly safeguards have been eroded or abandoned in Australia,” says Professor Jones, who previously <a href="https://thecatholicherald.com/podcast/our-right-to-be-protected-from-suicide-with-prof-david-albert-jones/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">spoke to the <em>Catholic Herald</em> podcast</mark></a> about the great dangers posed by assisted suicide for the UK.
“Rather than an example of the law working well it is an example of what happens when you prioritise access over safety. The practice of Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) in Australia is rapidly coming to resemble Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in Canada.
"It is important for parliamentarians in the United Kingdom to realise that once you legalise some form of assisted suicide or euthanasia you open the door to later expansion affecting more people and [leave it] open to more abuse."
The evidence that the committees in the UK and Ireland have heard has also been wholly one-sided, argues the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, a <a href="https://thecatholicherald.com/assisted-suicide-mp-unveils-stacked-committee-to-consider-her-bill/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">criticism that has been made by other organisations and experts</mark></a> opposed to the assisted suicide legislation being pushed. The centre claims that no witnesses were called on by the committees who were critical of the emerging practice in Australia.
Professor Jones points out that while there is limited evidence from Australia on EAS – it has only five years of official data for the State of Victoria, and there is less than three years of data in most other relevant Australian jurisdictions – the little that is available is troubling.
There is clear evidence, he notes, that Australian States are moving down a "slippery slope" away from a system of assisted suicide as practised in Oregon – and which is concerning enough – and towards the widely criticised situation of euthanasia in Canada. This should give parliamentarians "great pause for thought in simply accepting Australia as giving an example of a working framework for assisted suicide".
In 2019, Belinda Teh became the face of Western Australia’s (WA) campaign for introducing assisted suicide. She embarked on a 3,500-km journey from Melbourne to Perth "to raise awareness of the desperate need for more compassionate end-of-life choices and to honour her mother Mareia, who died in agony from aggressive breast cancer in a specialist palliative care facility in Perth", <a href="https://www.gogentleaustralia.org.au/belinda_teh_nominated_for_wa_young_australian_of_the_year"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">according to</mark></a> Go Gentle Australia, which campaigned for assisted suicide to be made legal in WA.
The organisation claims that doctors refused Mareia’s requests for help to die quicker because the option was not yet legal in Western Australia. Belinda Teh arrived at the steps of Parliament House in Perth at the completion of her walk on 4 August 2019, the day MPs began debate on WA's Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill. More than 300 supporters were on hand to welcome her, including then Premier Mark McGowan, recounts Go Gentle Australia.
It then notes that on 10 December that year, Western Australia became the second Australian state to pass an assisted suicide law "giving terminally ill people choice at the end of life". The law came into effect on 1 July 2021.
Professor Jones's new briefing paper on EAS in Australia comes just as Cardinal Vincent Nichols has again spoken out on the “deeply flawed process ” occurring in pushing assisted suicide legislation in the UK, which he says risks turning the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) into a “National Death Service”.
The comments from the archbishop of Westminster and the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales come in a <mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><a href="https://www.cbcew.org.uk/cardinal-assisted-suicide-pastoral-letter/">pastoral letter</a> </mark>urging Catholics to contact their MPs – even if they have done so already – to oppose the Bill that seeks to legalise assisted suicide. The letter will be read in the parishes of Westminster archdiocese over the weekend of 5-6 April.
“Can the National Health Service cope with assisted suicide or will it, as the Health Secretary has warned, cause cuts elsewhere in the NHS?" Cardinal Nichols posits.
"Can MPs guarantee that no medical practitioner or care worker would be compelled to take part in assisted suicide? Would this mean the establishment of a ‘national death service’?”
<a href="https://thecatholicherald.com/cardinal-nichols-warns-of-national-death-service/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><strong><em>RELATED: Cardinal Nichols warns of ‘National Death Service’</em></strong></mark></a>
<em>Photo: Belinda Teh reacts upon arriving at the Western Australia Parliament after finishing her 3,500 km journey from Melbourne to Perth to raise awareness in favour of assisted suicide, Perth, Australia, 6 August 2019. (Photo by Will Russell/Getty Images.)</em>
