Fighting back against legalised euthanasia and assisted suicide
RICHARD EGAN BA, Grad Dip Lib Sc.
PRESENTATION: RIGHT TO LIFE AUSTRALIA INC CONFERENCE 2023
I want to talk to you about fighting back against legalised euthanasia and assisted suicide and I was very encouraged by Dr Joanna's Howes talk. I like her fighting spirit. Euthanasia and assisted suicide will - when the New Wales Act, sadly comes into operation on 28th November [2023] - then be legal in 26 jurisdictions around the world, including all six Australian states and obviously with imminent law in the A.C.T.
In Colombia, Italy, Germany, Austria and Canada euthanasia became legal following decisions of the highest court in each of those countries based on an alleged constitutional charter right. Weirdly, in Canada they found a right to kill people as part of the right to life. Very bizarre.
In the Netherlands, euthanasia was first declared legal by the court, interpreting the defence of force majeure or in common law, the defence of necessity. Essentially, the court said when a doctor is faced with otherwise unrelievable suffering in the patient, he or she is, as it were, forced to kill the patient if the patient requests it.
In some US states, firstly in Oregon, assisted suicide became legal following a popular vote, so a kind of referendum or plebiscite. In all other jurisdictions, including the six Australian states, euthanasia or assisted suicide became legal as a decision of the legislature or the Parliament. Now, in every case legalising the two acts, euthanasia or assisting someone to suicide creates an exception to the otherwise universally applied criminal laws which prohibit you murdering anyone.
And consent is never a valid defence to murder. We don't allow duels to the death or cage fights to the death or a mutually agreed cannibalism to the death. So consent is never a valid defence to murder. And we also have laws against assisting a person to suicide. So, people argue suicide is not illegal. That's correct. But helping someone to commit suicide is, in every case, illegal.
But legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide creates a carve-out to that - says we're [not] going to apply the law of murder or assisting suicide to certain categories of people. Legalisation also abandons a public policy commitment to suicide prevention for all. In Australia, we call it ''towards zero''. We want how many suicides? NONE. We don't want to see anyone taking their life.
And we do everything we can to prevent suicide. But then we carve out this group so - not only we're not going to try to prevent your suicide, we're going to approve it with a state permit: "You may top yourself. Authorized -Secretary of Health Victoria". These carve-outs from the criminal law and from prevention efforts are based on the idea that some people are right to think that they are better off dead.
Then it becomes a good thing for the state to authorise health practitioners - or in Germany under the court decision, anyone - to supply the person with a lethal substance to commit suicide or directly administer a lethal substance to kill them. In the parliamentary debates, both the public argument and the debates in Parliament have tended to focus on the claim that "a small number" - it's always "a small number" - of terminally ill or chronically ill people cannot be adequately helped by palliative care so that direct killing is the only way to provide them with a peaceful death.
This has been combined with an argument that the choice to end one's life is a valid exercise of autonomy. We all like autonomy. We all like to make our own decisions in our life, not to be told what to do.
Well, this argument for autonomy is mostly advanced by the white, the well and the wealthy - and the slightly worried.
And this was typified when James Downar, who was the lead euthanasia pioneer in Ontario, came to Melbourne for the launch of legalised euthanasia here. And he described the typical case after he'd killed several dozen people in Ontario as involving - his words - ''a self-willed captain of industry who demands the right to exit on his own terms because that is how he manages the rest of his affairs''.
Now, looking at the race issue or cultural issue, if you look at the statistics for California, white Californians are accessing assisted suicide at 27 times the rate of blacks and at 14 times the rate for Hispanics. It's a white issue. It's a white privilege issue.
Euthanasia is not the poor, the vulnerable, the lonely, the disabled who are demanding it, but they become its victims.
There is accumulating evidence that once legalised euthanasia becomes a threat to more vulnerable people - not the people who are demanding it, but others who get caught by it.
Since 1998, 125 Oregonians have died from assisted suicide after expressing concerns about the financial cost of treatment. In Canada, euthanasia is now being openly offered as an alternative solution for poverty, homelessness, disability - including the notorious offer of euthanasia to a female veteran and Paralympian as an alternative to waiting for a stair chair so she could get up to the second floor of her house: "If it's taking too long Ma'am, you can always ask for MAID (Medial Aid in Dying)".
568 cases in Canada in 2022 are recorded in the official annual report as "needing disability support services but did not receive them". 568 people needed disability support services did not receive them, but they did get MAID - euthanasia.
From 24 March 2024 in Canada sadly, euthanasia will also be offered as a solution for people dealing with mental illness as it is already in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Some cases from the Netherlands with Asperger's [syndrome]: A man in his sixties with Asperger's -described as an utterly lonely man whose life had been a failure - that's how the doctor wrote up the case, the doctor who killed him - was euthanased because he was horrified at moving into sheltered accommodation.
Although he had been diagnosed with severe and probably chronic depression with a persistent death wish, another psychiatrist, after seeing him just once, certified he was free enough of depression in order to be able to competently consent to euthanasia.
Another man in his thirties, also with Asperger's, was euthanased based on his distress at his continuous yearning for meaningful relationships and his repeated frustrations in this area because of his inability to deal adequately with closeness and social contacts.
These things make me weep. This abandonment of the disabled and the mentally ill. Even before euthanasia has become legal in Canada for mental illness 2,294 Canadians were euthanized, citing loneliness as a factor in their decision. Why couldn't the medical practitioner or nurse practitioner just have made a cup of tea and had a chat?
In Belgium, persistent suicidal ideation is now accepted as valid grounds for euthanasia. So you qualify for euthanasia if you repeatedly want to kill yourself, that's all. You don't need anything else.
In opposition to this notion of being ''better off dead'' is the wonderfully named disability group ''Not Dead Yet! '' Exclamation mark. I love those guys.
These are some of their observations on assisted suicide based on their lived experience of disability.
"Although intractable pain" these are their words - "has been emphasized as the primary reason for enacting assisted suicide laws the top reasons given are:
disability issues, loss of autonomy, less able to engage in enjoyable activities, loss of dignity, loss of control of bodily functions and feelings of being a burden. "
People with disabilities live with those every day of their life. Are we saying they'd be better off dead?
In judging that an assisted suicide request is rational essentially, doctors are concluding that a person's physical disabilities and dependence on others for everyday needs are sufficient grounds to treat them completely differently than they would treat a physically able-bodied suicidal person.
So, if you take the two things that drive the argument, one - autonomy.
Clearly we don't take that principle the whole way. No one so far in our society is advocating assisted suicide for anyone who asks - well, apart from Philip Nitschke. He was happy to kill off the troubled teen, the depressed farmer who lost his land. He'd help anyone die.
But you know, he's running a cult. So that's Philip.
But generally, there's a second plank. The doctor has to agree that the person would be better off dead. So euthanasia and assisted suicide laws, by definition, are ablest and discriminatory. They abandon some people. They decide who's worth saving, whose life is still worth living.
In Victoria, it's not sufficient for the doctor to agree that you're better off dead before being able to kill you. The doctor has to get a permit from the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. This was the first time that this has been required since 1st September 1939 when Adolf Hitler authorized Dr. Karl Brandt and others to decide which disabled young German children would be better off dead.
So Victoria boasts of its 68 so-called safeguards. We did an analysis of those - most of those are illusory. Mostly, they just require ticking a box. Has this form come in? Tick. Safeguard? Really?
Recently, Dr. Nick Carr was found to have acted unprofessionally and fined when he failed to get the required two people to actually witness an applicant sign the final request form. So one of the safeguards is we prove it's voluntary because when the person signing "I want to have euthanasia or assisted suicide", two other people are supposed to sign and say they saw them sign.
Well, Dr Nick Carr gets the witnesses to sign the form and doesn't get the person to sign the form, sends it in. Some bright clerk at the Board - the Voluntary Assisted Dying Board - actually notices. So that was good, sends it back, says you better get the signature. So [Dr Carr] gets the patient in [again] and the patient signs it, but the witnesses aren't there!
He just uses the witnesses' signature from three days before and sends that in. Now, the clerk must have known that's what had happened. But it gets put through and the Secretary issues a permit. Why isn't the Secretary being investigated, sacked, charged with approving a murder? Because there was no evidence, according to the famous 68 safeguards, that the person actually signed in a voluntary way. So quite, quite shocking.
But what's the Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) Review Board busy doing?
Well, we just did a Freedom of Information request. Got all their Board minutes.
What they're busy doing is persecuting aged care or health facilities that resist euthanasia. They're demanding they all allow it and they're criticizing and threatening to take to the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Authority doctors who have been making public comments critical of euthanasia.
I don't think it was you Marion {Dr Marion Harris] but they will be coming for you.! I thought Joanna [Howe]'s thing about the alarmist gatekeepers was very relevant to this issue.
We found in the Board minutes that there was a report received of a person who had a seizure after ingesting the lethal poison prescribed for assisted suicide and the minutes recorded that the members of the Board "with clinical experience" claimed the seizure was unlikely to be related to the ingestion of the substance.
What an extraordinary claim given that this is regularly reported from Oregon as a complication of assisted suicide. They showed no knowledge of that at all.
They also received reports of some deaths being unduly prolonged. As I think the clinical guidance says it could take up to 3 hours - that means some deaths are taking longer than that. And how did they want to deal with that? More euthanasia. So the doctor can bump you off instead.
The promise of a peaceful death is illusory.
The complication rates in Oregon over 25 years of data - seven and a half percent per year are complicated - regurgitation and seizures, recovering - as in, not dying - taking four days to die, and so on. In the Netherlands with euthanasia (they go with a backup euthanasia kit in case the first one doesn't work, which we don't do that here in Victoria - it's first time has got to work), three percent of cases [involve complications]: spasms, tachycardia, rapid heartbeat, excessive production of mucus, extreme gasping.
OK. There's no requirement in Victoria or other Australian states for actually reporting complications, so we're not going to hear about the worst things.
Assisted suicide and euthanasia laws usually require the request be voluntary and free of coercion. To be truly free of coercion it would not just be overt coercion but also free from undue influence, subtle pressures and familial or societal expectations.
And for me, the very first thing I thought about back in the Nitschke days in the Northern Territory when that law passed, was that once you make a law for euthanasia, you can have Mrs. Brown who has been a paid-up member of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society all her life and is just dying to get euthanasia. Sorry, no pun intended. She wants it.
Well, good on Mrs. Brown. We'll leave her to her own thing.
But Mrs. Smith now, in the next bed in the nursing home, from the day that law passes can't take her right to life for granted anymore. Every morning she has to get up or wake up in bed and say, ''I'm not going to ask for it today''.
And maybe her favourite television show gets cancelled or the kids don't come to visit or make odd remarks about all the children's school fees and you know, how much is that house worth, Mum and so on. And so the subtle pressures - how do we know? And with elder abuse rife in Australia, the latest studies are just shocking, including inheritance impatience. Adult children wanting to get their hands on the money. And it doesn't have to be overt, but I did do up a little meme that said ''Mum, have you asked for your VAD permit yet?'' Because that's the subtle message.
Some supporters of euthanasia acknowledge this, but just don't care. Dr. Henry Marsh, British neurosurgeon and pro euthanasia, said:
"Even if a few grannies are bullied into committing suicide, isn't that a price worth paying so that all these other people can die with dignity?" Charming.
In the Netherlands now, you want to be very careful what you put in advance directive. If you write an advance directive that says ''If I have to go into a nursing home and I have dementia and am no longer competent, then I want to be euthanized.''
What that means now, according to the courts, is if you go into the nursing home, you've got dementia and they come to kill you and you say ''No, I want to live.'' And you fight them. They can hold you down and kill you because your competent self - the advanced directive - binds your future demented self and authorizes them to hold you down and kill you - literally. The court said that.
It's unbelievable. But there we are.
Medical errors. Dr. Stephen Parnis and Dr. John Daffy from our Australian Care Alliance have been very good on this. There was a fantastic segment on ''The Project'' [TV] where essentially they forced Andrew Denton to make this statement. Andrew Denton, the Go Gentle founder.
''There is no guarantee ever that doctors are going to be 100% right''.
What does that mean? It means they're going to kill some people on the grounds they have cancer and they don't even have the cancer. They're going to kill some people who have been told they've got six months to live who could have lived years longer. There's Jeanette Hall, the famous woman from Oregon, who got talked out of euthanasia and is still alive 23 years later.
There's going to be doctors who approve euthanasia and didn't know about the latest available treatment. I think there was a set of lung cancer patients in one study reported where they weren't even getting the proper biopsy done to see whether it was a more treatable form of lung cancer. Straight on the road to MAID.
I don't know how many of you remember the debate in Victoria when Jill Hennessy was claiming 50 suicides each year where these terminally ill people are killing themselves in horrible ways and we have to pass this law. We will be stopping one horrible suicide each week.
Did they stop the suicides? There were 62 more suicides in Victoria in 2022 than there were in 2017 when she made that claim.
More significantly, the suicide rate among those over 65 years in Victoria increased between 2019 and 2022 by 42% which was five times the increase in New South Wales - where euthanasia was not yet legalised.
So studies all around the world have demonstrated there is no way that legalising assisted suicide prevents any suicides and it increases the overall rate, but it probably also increases the rate of unapproved suicides.
We need to reaffirm suicide prevention for all and not abandon those we think would be better off dead by affirming suicide or euthanasia as a valid choice.
So, there's a very quick tour. What can we do?
Be informed: We are promoting our own work, of course - so the Australian Care Alliance - under the Facts tab, there's the two books that I keep up to date, particularly Fatally Flawed Experiments, where every time an annual report comes out from one of the 26 jurisdictions where it's legalised, we update it so all the latest information is there. I just updated it for Canada from the most recent report.
And also the 12 Categories of Wrongful Death, some of which are touched on today. So deaths with wrong diagnosis, wrong prognosis, people with disabilities being discriminated against and so forth. People with undiagnosed depression and people coerced and so on.
This narrow group that they said euthanasia was for - there is no jurisdiction where it's been kept to that at all. There's no possibility of doing that for all the reasons explained in that publication.
Look, there is some hope, there's some fightback. It is not looking all one way. There's places where they're still fighting off euthanasia laws. The UK is doing very well. They keep knocking them back. Although Jersey and the Isle of Man are now looking a little shaky.
But most there's still only ten out of the 50 US states have legalised assisted suicide and the others - they keep winning time after time. Some states bills get put up every year and defeated, so it is possible. In terms of turnaround, I think Canada has gone so far that there is a reaction now - when you get the main Canadian newspapers reporting these stories about the disabled veterans and the homeless and so on.
And then there was a bill just voted on in the last few days trying to prevent the coming into effect of the euthanasia for the mentally ill in March 2024. It was defeated by just 17 votes. So - a very close vote. And I think all the parties, all the members of the parties on the right voted for that bill.
So there is a reaction.
In Australia we need to analyse the evidence. We need to keep criticising the dangers, not let the VAD [Voluntary Assisted Dying] Review Board alarmist gatekeepers silence us. No-one will silence Marion Harris - I know that.
Okay, let me step back. In 1941, in Germany, two young people, Hans and Sophie Scholl, read on a secretly copied leaflet, the powerful denunciation by Bishop Clement Augustus von Galen of the Nazis' Aktion T-4 euthanasia program. Von Galen just had this absolute scathing denunciation of this program where they were literally killing disabled and mentally ill children, and then they went on to kill disabled war veterans and so on well before the Holocaust began.
This inspired those two young people to start the White Rose movement. They produced leaflets which they posted around Germany urging opposition to Hitler and Nazism. At her trial just before she was beheaded by the guillotine, 21-year-old Sophie said 'Somebody, after all, had to make a start'.
Professor Kurt Huber who was also executed as a participant in the White Rose group, said the leaflets aimed to ''call out the truth as clearly and audibly possible into the German night''.
We're living in a night - a dark night where elderly and disabled people are at threat of having their lives taken unnecessarily and prematurely being abandoned.
We need to be those who make a start and call out the truth, and most importantly, refuse to cooperate in any way or ever to accept as permanent the euthanasia and assisted suicide regimes.
Thank you.