SOUTH Australia’s Parliament will “send shock waves throughout the
country” if it defies the odds and passes proposed euthanasia
legislation, an Adelaide Archdiocesan official said.
By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
SOUTH Australia’s Parliament will “send shock waves throughout the country” if it defies the odds and passes proposed euthanasia legislation, an Adelaide Archdiocesan official said.
Paul Russell, Family and Life Officer for the Archdiocese of Adelaide, told The Record that based on the second-reading debate, he expects the Greens’ Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care (Voluntary Euthanasia) Bill to be defeated when votes are finalised on November 18 by 11 votes to 10, which he said is “too close for comfort”.
The State’s Upper House late last week voted 11-10 to send the proposed legislation to be reviewed by a Parliamentary Committee. If passed again by the Upper House after this review, it will be sent to the Lower House for a conscience vote. While expecting to win this narrowly, the pro-life movement is soon to receive a body blow with the retirement of pro-life Liberal MPs Robert Lawson and Caroline Schafer at the March 2010 election.
Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson said in a letter to Parliament that “once we seek to create exceptions such as euthanasia we effectively diminish the value of all human life”.
“If we begin to make value judgements about the relative quality of people’s lives, we lose sight of the objective reality that all life is sacred,” said Archbishop Wilson, also Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference President.
He said a broader understanding of palliative care support services in the community would diminish the call for euthanasia, adding that legalising voluntary euthanasia would increase people’s fears of what might happen to them.
“They deserve reassurance and care, not simply the spectre of a hastened death,” he said.
If passed, the euthanasia legislation will be the first of its kind to be enacted in law since the Northern Territory legalised euthanasia in 1996, and was consequently overturned with Commonwealth legislation introduced by Liberal MP Kevin Andrews.
The pro-life movement will be boosted, however, as the Democratic Labor Party has now registered in SA and will be running a euthanasia ticket, among other things, in the March State election, with Mr Russell as State President.
l The Australian Christian Lobby challenged the Tasmanian Government to now “step up palliative care support and resources” for people with terminal illnesses, particularly in regional areas, after the Greens’ Dying with Dignity Bill was defeated on November 4.
The Bill was comprehensively defeated 15-7 in Tasmania’s Lower House, with Premier David Bartlett voting against it, saying it lacked legal and medical credibility.
Catholic Health Australia (CHA), the national body representing over 680 health organisations, said the Bill was poorly developed, with “a very wide scope that fails to distinguish with clinical precision where death is certain and those who could continue to live”. CHA’s submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry said that the Bill also allows escape from an unwanted burden of care; lets doctors decide what is an acceptable quality of life; lets doctors determine the morality of their own actions and provides a “purely procedural response” to the problem of measuring subjective suffering.
Hobart Archbishop Adrian Doyle said that while the Bill’s failure seemed to be its legal and medical loopholes as highlighted by the Tasmanian Premier, the Catholic Church impacted heavily on the Parliamentary Committee’s awareness of palliative care due to its practical experience in the field.
The Archbishop, his Vicar General Fr Mark Freeman whose brother-in-law had palliative care during a terminal illness, and Calvary Health’s chief anaesthetist Dr Gerard McGushin fronted the Committee on August 10.
Southern Cross Care also made an influential submission, he said, but added that the debate highlighted pubic confusion about what palliative care is and how much support it provides.
State Greens leader Nick McKim who introduced the Bill said that the “slow and humiliating suffering of those who could not be supported by palliative care is a bloody, bloody disgrace”, The Mercury newspaper reported.
Archbishop Doyle said that more assurance that palliative care is available would alleviate concerns reflected in opinion polls that often support euthanasia.
After warning during the debate that Catholic hospitals and hospices would have been put in a difficult situation, he told The Record last week that by pushing individual rights, the euthanasia lobby was creating responsibilities for people working in Catholic healthcare to become involved in a practice “we view as abhorrent”.