On Thursday 16 November the New South Wales Legislative Council narrowly rejected the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2017 by 20 votes to 19. The vote took place at almost midnight after a long debate through the day.
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating welcomed the news, saying:
Questions and answers on the Victorian “Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2017”
To be debated in the Victorian Legislative Council (late 2017)
Dr Peter McCullagh MD (Melb), D Phil (Oxon), MRCP (Lond) *
Q Has the frequency of euthanasia cases stabilised in Belgium following legalisation in 2003?
A Hardly. Despite an initial expectation that this would occur after a ‘backlog’ had been processed, there has been a steady increase from 235 in the first year to 1807 in 2013.Source
The President of Right to Life Australia, Margaret Tighe, said today was a tragic day for the people of Victoria and indeed for the people of Australia.
Margaret Tighe, President of Right To Life Australia said today:
“The Victorian Government is today introducing into the Parliament legislation which will give doctors the power to deliberately end the lives of those patients who request it under certain circumstances.
"The depiction of the death of Victorian Mr Sims using a 12 year old DVD movie is an amateur attempt at influencing young people to lobby MPs for assisted suicide," said Mary Collier CEO Right to Life Australia.
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The Right to Life Australia Inc. defends the right to life of all human beings from conception until natural death. We lobby government for legal protection of the most vulnerable in society – the unborn baby, elderly, sick and those with disabilities.
PO Box 2029, Brunswick East
Victoria 3057 Australia
Phone: (03) 9385 0100
Fax: (03) 9384 6811
Email: rtl@rtlaust.com
www.righttolife.com.au
We are non-party political and non-denominational. Right to Life is a political pressure group working to uphold the right to life of every person from conception to natural death. As such Right to Life Australia will strongly campaign against abortion, IVF, euthanasia, infanticide, embryo stem cell research. Right to Life Australia provides free counselling to women facing crisis pregnancies.
