Overseas news
Dr David Swanton surveyed voluntary assisted dying (VAD) advocates around the world throughout 2020–2021. Some of you may know David because he runs the Exit group here in Canberra. He thanks the 52 ACT residents who responded to the survey. His survey was not designed to determine popular opinion on…
Canadian Atheist’s columnist Scott Douglas Jacobsen talks to Jeanne Arthur, the President of Dying With Dignity ACT. Here we talk about her life, work, and views.
Assisted suicide is still prohibited by law in many countries. Free and responsible citizens continue to be patronised and prevented against their will from ending their suffering and life in a manner they personally consider dignified. Relatives and friends who respect the wish of a seriously ill person to die and who give him or her their support are still being treated as criminals.
The organization, Dignitas continues to assert the right of people to make their own decisions about when they should die. Legal cases in Germany and in England are confronting the long held prejudice against human beings taking control of the timing of their deaths.
Religion always has a way of taking the least loving side when it comes to controversial issues.
Love between two people? If they’re gay, pastors will throw a hissy fit. Women seeking an abortion after being raped? Some Christians will argue they shouldn’t be allowed to have that option.
In an era of growing medical sophistication combined with longer life expectancies, many people are concerned that they should not be forced to linger on in old age or in states of advanced physical or mental de-crepitude which conflict with strongly held ideas of self and personal identity
At the World Federation Conference held in Amsterdam in May this year Dying with Dignity ACT Inc. president compared the ACT Crimes Act legislation with the ACT Human Rights Act legislation to show that the Crimes Act legislation discriminates against those people who wish to die. While it is legal to end one’s own life, the law forces people who wish to make this legal choice into hanging, gassing, drowning themselves as well as retaining the discriminatory language associated with the choice by continuing to call their choice ‘suicide’ and them ‘suicides’.
She has proposed that we need new language to discuss the choice to die. She proposes to call this choice an Elective Death and outlines in the speech following how it would work in practice to make a choice for death that would alleviate the suffering of those who make this choice and those who are forced to endure the long slow process of dying that is forced on us all by the law because politicians refuse to consider any alternative.
As a Belgian social scientist working on the topic of end-of-life care and decision making for the last ten years, a lot of my research has concerned the practice of euthanasia, which my country legalised in 2002 for incurable patients with severe suffering.
Once joined in matrimony, Adele and Victor Stevens now share a garden fence on a quiet suburban street in the Woden Valley. The ageing neighbours have had their share of arguments since meeting in high school, marrying and separating, but they’re both certain of one thing. They want to control…
The day he was to die, Vernon Gearhard had breakfast with Fran, his wife of 57 years, their three children and their spouses. He listened to some of his favorite music – classical pianist Johannes Brahms and opera singer Kathleen Battle – and around noon, he and Fran sat on…
Friday the California legislature passed a bill to allow assisted suicide that, with Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature, would make the country’s most populous state the fifth to allow terminally ill residents to end their life. Rep. Lois Court, a Denver Democrat, aims to make Colorado the sixth. Court and fellow…
MPs have rejected plans for a right to die in England and Wales in their first vote on the issue in almost 20 years. In a free vote in the Commons, 118 MPs were in favour and 330 against plans to allow some terminally ill adults to end their lives…
