By Julia Medew
- Read more: Beverley's choice - 'I think my friends will understand'
- Read more: Fairfax Media's role is to document views for public debate
- Q&A with euthanasia advocate Dr Rodney Syme
Beverley Broadbent was not dying of a terminal illness, nor was she depressed or unhappy. But at 83, she wanted to die.
After living a rich and satisfying life, the Brighton East woman said the ageing process had come to feel like a disease that was robbing her of her physical and mental fitness. In February, she said she had had enough.
''I look well and I walk well so people think I'm fine. But I have so many things wrong with me,'' she said. ''The balance is gone. It's taking so much time for me to keep fit to enjoy myself that there's not enough time to enjoy myself.''
Beverley Broadbent at home with her dog Lucy.Credit: Angela Wylie
In several interviews with Fairfax Media, Ms Broadbent said she planned to take her own life so she could have a peaceful, dignified death. She said she did not want her health to deteriorate to the point where she had dementia or found herself in a nursing home with no way out.
The environmental activist chose to tell her story because she believed many elderly people wanted to die when they felt their life was complete, but lacked the means to go gently.
''I can't understand why people who really want to can't have the means to go with the help of a doctor in a dignified manner at the time that they choose,'' she said.
''They are not asking anybody else to do it, they don't want to pressure anyone else to do it, they just want to have the right to do what I'm doing. I hope people can
see how sensible it is and that I'm not stupid, I'm not depressed, I'm not sad. I'm having a good life that I'm enjoying right to the last minute.''
Ms Broadbent said she had acquired some barbiturates - the drugs euthanasia advocates call the ''peaceful pill'' - and planned to take them when the time was right.
She died at home in her bed on February 11.
When she explained her choice, Ms Broadbent said her fear of deteriorating to the point where she would be unable to end her life made her want to go sooner rather than later. She said if physician-assisted suicide was legal, she might have pushed on knowing she could end her life at any time.
''I can't wait, I can't take the risk,'' she said.
Her story comes as the Coroners Court of Victoria launches an investigation into suicide to establish how common it is and what factors are driving it. In recent years, the court has seen an increasing number of cases in which people have made apparently rational decisions to end their lives because they were suffering a chronic or terminal illness.
Euthanasia campaigner Rodney Syme, who met Ms Broadbent several times before her death, said he believed she had not been depressed and had made a choice that many other elderly people would like to emulate.
He said an increasing number of older people were contacting him on the issue. Many wanted to avoid nursing homes.
Although polls show about 80 per cent of Australians support voluntary euthanasia for people with a terminal illness, Dr Syme said the question of elderly people being given the right to die had not been publicly debated in Australia.
This was despite the fact that many elderly people were severely disabled and experiencing great suffering on a par with that caused by cancer or other painful diseases, he said.
''Unfortunately, often people in Bev's situation who do try to talk about these things are patronised by their family, who say: 'Don't talk like that gran, no, no, no, you're all right.' They are put down and patronised, no one gives them a voice,'' he said.
''I think it's an issue for which a lot of people probably have very quiet and hidden opinions. It's an issue which is going to assume greater and greater importance and it's about time the community started to debate it in a logical way.''
But Dr Katrina Haller, senior executive officer of Right to Life Australia, said Ms Broadbent's story exacerbated her concern that elderly people were increasingly being viewed as a burden when they should be valued, supported and not ''dumped in old people's homes''.
She said increasing discussion about elderly people taking up too many hospital beds, for example, could be encouraging suicide when the community was spending a large amount of money trying to prevent people taking their own lives.
''Elderly people can be coerced into feeling they are a burden on their family and their friends and the medical staff at hospital - and hospitals have other agendas, don't they? They want to free up beds and minimise the money spent on people,'' she said.
Dr Haller said that although Ms Broadbent's story was an emotional one and might be hard to argue with, it did not amount to a case for legalising physician-assisted suicide, which would create a culture of death and turn doctors into killers.
She said legislating a right for elderly people to die would inevitably start a debate about others, including people with dementia and children with disabilities.
''Where do you draw the line? … In Belgium and the Netherlands [where euthanasia is legal for some people] the door gets opened a bit wider as years go by,'' she said.
For help or information call Suicide Helpline Victoria on 1300 651 251 or Lifeline on 131 114, or visit beyondblue.org.au