Alison Plumb has submitted a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University on Euthanasia Politics in the Australian State and Territorial Parliaments. The issue of voluntary euthanasia has a turbulent history in the state and territorial parliaments. Since the passage of the Euthanasia Laws…
In our last Bulletin we asked if anyone knew of anyone who had a 3-5 year life span who would be prepared to be a plaintiff for us to lodge a case with the ACT Supreme Court along the lines of the case lodged in Canada which has a Human…
Melbourne writer Edel Wignell would rather die than endure any more of the debilitating pain that has dominated her life for 30 years. “The pain doesn’t go away. So I’d rather be dead. I’ve had a wonderful life, it’s not as though I’m depressed,” Ms Wignell said. Read ABC News…
LAST year Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old Californian, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Rather than let the illness take its dreadful course she moved to Oregon, where a “Death with Dignity” law exempts doctors from prosecution, with some safeguards, if they prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients who ask…
A TOP doctor has called for euthanasia to be legalised, in the first public submissions to a parliamentary inquiry into end-of-life choices. Royal Children’s Hospital nephrologist Dr Harley Powell was among 28 groups or individuals to support medically assisted suicide in Victoria. “A compassionate nation like Australia needs to legalise…
South Australia’s history of social reform could see it lead the way in becoming the country’s first state to legalise euthanasia, a former Northern Territory chief minister says.
Compassion & Choices’ intense campaign to authorize aid in dying in California achieved major victories recently. After months of hard work and an emotional 90-minute debate yesterday, the California Senate passed the End of Life Option Act by a vote of 23 to 14!
As elsewhere in the West, the churches here have long been fighting a rearguard action to maintain their dominance and hegemony. But this is no easy task with an ever-growing list of clerical retreats and regroupings in response to an increasingly secular but nonetheless conservative Australia. Read The Canberra Times…
When Sandy Bem found out she had Alzheimer’s, she resolved that before the disease stole her mind, she would kill herself. The question was, when?
There is nothing about the home we visit near Arnhem, south of Amsterdam, to suggest it is anything but ordinary. It is council collection day and assorted bits of broken or outworn furniture line the pavement. A postman asks 77-year-old Toos Pietersma to take a package for an absent neighbour.…
Choice in end of life is area of the euthanasia debate that needs to be discussed openly and honestly if we are to advance public discussion beyond the right-to-die versus the sanctity-of-life deadlock. Dying with Dignity campaigner Peter Short died in December, age 57, on his own terms and in…
The South Australian coroner has called for a public debate about the “isolated” circumstances in which some older terminally ill Australians are ending their lives. Mark Johns called the situation “desperately sad” after learning from the ABC of a letter in which an elderly man requested that depression not be…
