Highlights from our newsletter

Excerpt from SBS News 22 August 2019

In recent weeks, the former Nationals party leader, Hon Barnaby Joyce MP who now sits on the backbench, has taken a leading role in the fight against the push to decriminalise abortion in NSW.

Australia has recently been reminded of its disgraceful record on government-funded abortions with the NSW parliament engaged in a fiery debate over the total legislation of abortion until birth!

 To our utter disgrace this is now the situation in Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland with South Australia poised to follow suit after the usual "government inquiry".

• Contact your MP's asking them to vote against the WA government's euthanasia bill soon to be introduced into the WA parliament in August. (see enclosed list of Parliamentarians)
• This follows the passage of similar legislation in the Victorian parliament.
• Patients in WA will be able to have their lives ended if medical opinion is that they will die in less than 12 months from a terminal illness.
• The WA bill will even allow a nurse practitioner to give the green light to euthanasia as a second opinion.

We won’t let the introduction of voluntary assisted dying overshadow our ongoing commitment to the sick. By Natasha Michael ,The Age 23/05/19

What matters most? Over the past week, Australians have contemplated this very question as they pondered their future and cast their votes at the federal election. Palliative Care Week calls for Australians to consider once again: what matters most?

I was 20 weeks pregnant as I walked into a women’s imaging centre with my husband and one-year-old daughter. We were excited to find out if we were having a little boy or girl. What we did find out caused my world to shatter.

“There is probably no more important issue in contemporary bioethics or a more serious ethical decision for our parliaments than that raised by the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2017 being debated this week in the Victorian Parliament.  Under this bill, conditions and safeguards are outlined that will allow physicians to terminate the life of patients and to assist patients to take their own life. This is a threshold moment for the country. No matter what justifications are offered for the bill, it constitutes an unacceptable departure in our approach to human existence and the irrevocable sanctity that should govern our understanding of what it means to be human.

Margaret Tighe, Letter to Chief Pharmacist, Alfred Health, Melbourne, May 2019

Dear Sir, I write as one who worked as a pharmacist at the Alfred hospital for several years after my return from working in the UK in late 1956.  I cannot recall the exact date of my employment there beginning at some time in 1957 until the beginning of 1961.

The abortion issue has been front page news in the US of late.  

The Good News has been from the following states – Ohio, Mississippi Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana – where a variety of laws curtailing abortion under certain circumstances – and at certain stages – have been enacted.  Well done to the pro-lifers in those states!

A Ministerial Advisory Panel reviews its success - Article by Michael Cook reproduced from Mercatornet.com Dec 4 2018 https://bit.ly/2GbhGFu 

One year ago, in December 2017, the Australian state of Victoria legalised euthanasia and assisted suicide. This has given new heart to supporters in other states who have been lobbying for years for the “right-to-die”.

Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (in Victoria) is currently advertising for "VAD Care Navigators" calling for "Clinical Nurse Consultants Grade 6 or Grade 4 Allied Health Professionals or Grade 4 Psychologists" to fill a new State-wide role in facilitating the assisted suicide or euthanasia of people across Victoria by matching those seeking to end their lives with willing doctors.  (NB As of 1/2/19 Careers.Vic (the official Victorian Government search portal for public sector jobs) website states: The job you tried to access has closed for applications and is no longer being advertised.