Matthew Abraham: Let’s not sugar-coat it, euthanasia is state-sponsored suicide

If SA’s Parliament crosses the threshold and votes to legalise euthanasia, there’ll be no going back, writes Matthew Abraham.

It is profoundly distressing to know that within a few weeks the South Australian parliament will finally hold hands and take us all on a giant leap into the unknown by passing the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill.

Like the final scene in Thelma & Louise, there’s no going back from this particular cliff.

Voluntary assisted dying is nice way of saying euthanasia and much nicer than saying what it really is – state-sponsored suicide.

Not that the Bill admits this, in fact it goes out of its way to deny it.

Right up front, in the preliminary definitions, clause 5 states “Voluntary assisted dying not suicide”.

“For the purpose of the laws of the State, the death of a person by the administration of a voluntary assisted dying substance in accordance with this Act will be taken not to constitute the death by suicide of the person,” it reads.

This is a ridiculous caveat. The inconvenient truth is if you take your own life, no matter how you do it, you have committed suicide.

“They’re very worried about the idea of state-sponsored death,” one of the MPs opposed to the Bill told me.

Pro-euthanasia lobbyists on the steps of SA Parliament. Picture: Sarah Reed

One of the trite arguments for pushing voluntary assisted dying so hard in parliament – this is the 17th attempt in 25 years – is that opinion polls show it has public support.

Opinion polls also consistently show overwhelming public support for the death penalty for murderers but that has zero support in SA’s parliament.

Three years ago, when Victoria was debating its eventual legalisation of euthanasia, former Labor prime minister Paul Keating wrote that this was “a threshold moment for the country”.

“No matter what justifications are offered for the (Victorian) 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,” he argued.

On the “safeguards” built into the Victorian laws, Keating warned “once termination of life is authorised the threshold is crossed” and from that point “it is much easier to liberalise the conditions governing the law”.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of how politics works knows this is true.

The current Bill has similar “safeguards” that have been critical in helping defuse the ticking legislative bomb.

Those safeguards will be eroded or junked completely, if not by this generation of lawmakers, then by the next. It’s the irrefutable law of political reform. And the global voluntary death movement knows how to play the long game.

Choice is the mantra. The Bill deems you must be over 18 and suffering from an advanced, terminal, incurable illness, to legally be given help to end your life.

But if you are younger than 18, suffering the same pain from the same incurable illness, bad luck.

Mental illness or disabilities alone do not qualify.

How long can such lines in the sand hold? Can’t those people excluded rightly argue the new law denies them the choice that is extended to others?

And what about the elderly who don’t want to be “a burden” on their families?

When Upper House MP Frank Pangallo tried to amend the Bill to allow faith-based institutions such as Calvary Hospice or St Basils aged care homes the choice to opt out of offering voluntary assisted death, he was rolled. Instead, they get Hobson’s Choice.

It’s likely, however, this amendment will be brought back to life in the House of Assembly debate.

No person should suffer needlessly from a terminal illness and everyone should have access to quality palliative care to provide end-of-life and often life-ending pain relief and dignity in dying.

If our politicians spent less time trying to help us top ourselves and more time trying to make all lives worth living, the world would be a happier place.

All life and death decisions are gut-wrenching. Several years ago, I was the legal guardian for my Uncle Jack, who had dementia, developed pneumonia in his nursing home and wound up in Daw Park Repat.

During the night he inhaled vomit and was being kept alive on a respirator. My mum and her older sister Alice and I stood around the bed watching what was left of their brother.

After a conversation with the doctors I asked them what they wanted to do. “Well, he’s not much good like this,” Aunty Alice said.

We asked them to remove the respirator tube and Jack died quietly. He’d run out of choices long ago.

But I couldn’t have helped Jack kill himself, even if he’d begged me to.

If you need someone to talk to, call LifeLine on 13 11 14, 24 hours a day.