With the Orwellian re-brand “Voluntary Assisted Dying”, euthanasia laws have sadly swept the nation. NSW is next.
One of the best campaigners for proper end of life health care is the advocacy organisation Hope.
For years, Hope has been at the forefront of working to keep our health system free of euthanasia.
Now with the Orwellian re-brand “Voluntary Assisted Dying”, euthanasia laws have sadly swept the nation.
New South Wales is next with the radical leftist MP Alex Greenwich to table a bill in Parliament on Thursday. Greenwich was instrumental in the 2017 same-sex marriage debate and the 2019 abortion-to-birth bill.
Sadly the public is ill-informed about his campaigns by a supportive and incurious media.
This morning Hope’s Director, Branka van der Linden, sent an email listing “10 deadly key points you need to know about this legislation being proposed for NSW”.
- Doctors and other health care workers are allowed to suggest euthanasia and assisted suicide to a patient.
- Mental illness, such as clinical depression, does not disqualify a person from euthanasia.
- The promised ‘protections’ for faith-based hospitals and aged care were false. In announcing his bill, Alex Greenwich disingenuously said that there would be protections for faith-based hospitals and aged-care providers. Not so. Faith-based aged-care facilities that object to euthanasia still need to allow doctors and nurses onto the premises for every stage of the euthanasia process, including allowing them to enter and kill a patient on site. Protect faith-based hospitals and aged-care workers with your gift to strengthen the fight now.
- The “specialist” euthanasia doctors don’t have to be specialists in the patient’s illness or have any history in treating them at all.
- Requests for lethal drugs can be made via telehealth – so a doctor doesn’t even need to be in the same room to approve the death of a person they have never examined.
- Time between first and final request can be as short as 5 days, or even less. No time for serious reflection, or for palliative care or mental health specialists to step in and consult.
- Doctors who are conscientious objectors are put at risk. While other states offer clear protections that allow doctors to opt out of the process completely, the Greenwich Bill is modelled on his controversial abortion bill, which still requires doctors to inform patients about how to access euthanasia. Doctors also need to inform the Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board every time they conscientiously object – which threatens their careers.
- Process shrouded in secrecy. Those involved in the euthanasia or assisted suicide process face up to 12 months in prison if they disclose personal information about a patient or any of their medical practitioners. While this will be marketed as ‘protecting a patient’s privacy’, it shrouds the life-taking process in secrecy and makes it completely impermeable against review.
- Offenders under the Greenwich Bill are given legal protections. Under NSW law, crimes like murder or manslaughter can be prosecuted at any time, even decades later. But in the Greenwich Bill, prosecutors only have two years to bring charges – otherwise an offender can go unpunished.
- Very little detail is recorded by the Voluntary Assisted Dying Board. The only information that’s required to be kept by the Board is the patient’s age, illness and whether they live in regional NSW. Nothing about the doctors involved or whether the patients received a psychological assessment. The Greenwich Bill shrouds the process in secrecy, protecting it from scrutiny by threatening to imprison those who reveal important information.
Hope is raising money to educate politicians and the public. Please give generously to their crisis campaign today.
If the public were informed there would not be support for euthanasia.