Kylie Monaghan face of new campaign to support voluntary euthanasia in SA
AT just 35, SA’s Kylie Monaghan is fighting the cancer in her body — and for the right to end her life on her own terms. Now she’s stepping up to support voluntary euthanasia. WATCH HER VIDEO
READ BELOW: New campaign backs euthanasia legislation in SA
- Jay’s emotional plea to back voluntary euthanasia laws
- ‘Slippery slope to Nazi Germany’ in euthanasia law
- Show ‘courage in supporting euthanasia Bill’
AFTER Kylie Monaghan found a lump in her breast, a nurse offered her comfort by saying she was too young to have cancer.
But at 29 years old, she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer.
Over the next six months, she had a mastectomy, as well as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
But sadly, the deadly disease spread to her liver and bones.
It has been about six years since her initial diagnosis and Ms Monaghan is still fighting off cancer.
Sitting in her Port Pirie home, Ms Monaghan spoke of her desire to have another option available to her should her suffering become worse.
That option is voluntary euthanasia.
“It’s something that needs to be talked about — it’s obviously an uncomfortable situation to talk about as it’s very personal for a lot of people,” she said.
“From a personal point of view, I have a small cancer in my brain and if it gets any bigger it is going to affect my co-ordination and I’ll end up dizzy and bedridden.
“I just think, ‘what sort of life would that be?’
“I got a fracture in my neck a few months ago and if it fractured again, it could paralyse me.
“I don’t want to be lying in bed staring at the ceiling and feel like a burden on my family — I want that choice.”
SA politicians will soon vote on the Voluntary Euthanasia Bill and Ms Monaghan has thrown her support behind a new social campaign called ‘Be the Bill’.
The campaign is aimed at urging politicians to look beyond the impersonal nature of the bill and remind them that their vote affects real people.
“I got involved because personally, with my journey, it can affect me,” Ms Monaghan, 35, said.
“I think people should have the right to choose — they don’t have to take it but it’s there.”
Following the secondary diagnosis of cancer in her liver and bones, Ms Monaghan ticked a few things off her bucket list — she married her partner Daryll, self-published a novel and travelled to New Zealand.
“My cancers have grown and spread a bit further into my bones but I’m stubborn and would like to continue on living, even without my beautiful brown hair,” she said.
A CAMPAIGN to pass voluntary euthanasia laws, backed by television and radio personality Andrew Denton, will launch in Adelaide this week.
The Be the Bill campaign will recruit South Australians to lobby their local MP to support a Bill before Parliament, which would make SA the first state to allow seriously ill people to choose to end their lives.
It follows a series of unsuccessful attempts to pass similar laws in SA over the past decade.
The campaign is jointly run by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and Go Gentle Australia, which was established by Denton after watching his 67-year-old father Kit die a slow and painful death from heart failure.
Port Pirie woman Kylie Monaghan, 35, is the public face of the campaign and features in a 90-second video about her battle with advanced cancer.
ANMF federal secretary Lee Thomas said the campaign aimed to remind MPs that their decision whether to approve the proposed law would affect real people.
“I know there are many, many nurses who have faced people in their care who are suffering unrelievable pain,” she said.
“This is a compassionate law that really is about giving people choice about a dignified death at a time of their choosing, if they require it and if palliative care is no longer a viable option for them.”
MPs will have a conscience vote on the Bill, put to Parliament in February by Labor’s Steph Key and supported by Liberal Duncan McFetridge.
It would allow people with a medical condition experiencing “unbearable and hopeless suffering” to choose voluntary euthanasia under certain circumstances.
The person must have a diagnosis of a medical condition but it need not be terminal, as was required by previous legislative attempts.
However, some MPs have raised concerns about this change and it is understood Ms Key is still consulting on the final criteria.
People seeking voluntary euthanasia would have to undergo assessment by two doctors, and possibly a psychiatrist, before being granted the option.
The underlying illness would be recorded as the cause of death on a death certificate.
During debate on the Bill in June, Premier Jay Weatherill expressed his support for reform and revealed that his grandfather — who was injured in WWII — had “begged” a doctor to end his life.
The new campaign comes as a terminally ill 17-year-old at the weekend became the first minor to be euthanised in Belgium after age restrictions for voluntary euthanasia in the country were lifted in 2014.
Last month, Denton addressed the National Press Club on the “price our community pays without a law for assisted dying”.
“Why, despite polls which consistently show Australians overwhelmingly support a law that would (help people) ... to die humanely, has no Australian parliament responded to the public will?” he said.
To support the campaign visit bethebill.com
