One of the few safeguards in the Australian State of Victoria’s assisted suicide law is set to be removed, allowing doctors to proactively suggest lethal drugs to terminally ill patients.
Under the Australian state’s assisted suicide scheme, known as voluntary assisted dying (VAD), the patient must initiate the process in order to reduce the risk of coercion or pressure. Activists have labelled the protections a ‘gag order’.
VAD has been held up as an example for Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which would allow patients in England and Wales deemed to be terminally ill, and with less than six months to live to receive help to kill themselves.
Removing safeguards
The changes come on the back of a report from Victoria’s Department of Health, which includes fictitionalised accounts expressing appretiation for the scheme and has made recommendations to loosen the law in the name of “improving access”. One “barrier” mentioned was the requirement of in-person consultations with doctors.
Mary-Anne Thomas, the Health Minister, claimed that allowing health practitioners to raise VAD with patients is a priority in order to keep “in step with other states”. Victoria’s VAD scheme, which was the first in the country, was once called “ground breaking”, but is now deemed “conservative”.
Doctor Nick Carr called the current protections “perverse”, admitting to times he had cared for terminally ill people and longed to ask them if they knew assisted suicide was an option.
President of Dying With Dignity Victoria Jane Morris celebrated, saying it is “the most incredible feeling” that one more VAD protection would be removed. Go Gentle Chief Executive Linda Swan, said she was “delighted” at the prospect.
Slippery slope
Celebrated Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson commented on X: “So the ‘gag’ clause in Victoria that prohibited Dr’s raising ‘voluntary assisted suicide’ has been scrapped.
“Apparently what was a safeguard now impedes access to end of life choices.”
Make no mistake, the slippery slope is real.
Institute Director Ciarán Kelly added: “Assisted suicide activists in Australia have told UK politicians there is ‘no slippery slope’, but just a few years after its introduction are celebrating the removal of safeguards, renaming them as ‘impediments’ and ‘barriers’ to access.
“Make no mistake, the slippery slope is real.”
‘Ultimate safeguard’
Kim Leadbeater has faced criticism after she scrapped a measure she had repeatedly described as the ‘ultimate safeguard’ in her assisted suicide Bill for England and Wales.
In a raft of hastily introduced amendments, the backbench MP sought to fix her controversial Bill by replacing a High Court judge’s approval of a person’s request to be killed, with the decision of a three-member panel, comprising a social worker, lawyer and psychiatrist.
But Professor Allan House, Emeritus Professor of Liaison Psychiatry at the University of Leeds, and Professor Gareth Owen, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at King’s College London, have argued that there are too few psychiatrists to make it work.
Similar concerns have been expressed over social workers, with Luke Geoghegan from the British Association of Social Workers commenting that their field is “stretched” and that his colleagues already have “lots of responsibilities and not enough resources”.
Australia: ‘Elderly people are ending their lives because of poor healthcare’
