"Kill Me" Living Will Coming to Australia?

On January 5 I published an article written by Paul Russell, the leader and founder of HOPE Australia concerning a proposed euthanasia bill that is potentially being sponsored by South Australian MP Steph Key. The article was entitled: Euthanasia by "Living Will."

Yesterday I wrote an article about another euthanasia bill that is being proposed by South Australian MP Bob Such. The article is entitled: South Australian MP Bob Such to introduce euthanasia bill, again.

South Australia has faced a barrage of bills to legalize euthanasia over the past few years. A similar bill sponsored by Bob Such was defeated by a vote of 22 to 20 in June 2012.

 The following article was written by American Bioethicist Wesley Smith on the euthanasia bill that South Australian State MP Steph Key is proposing. Wesley published this article on his blog on January 4 under the title: "Kill Me" Living Will Coming to Australia? The article follows.

"Kill Me" Living Will Coming to Australia

By Wesley Smith - Human Exceptionalism blog, January 4, 2013.

Wesley Smith

The euthanasia movement rarely tells the full truth about its objectives. Activists pretend that their goal is only to legalize “voluntary” terminations, or in the USA, to restrict killing to the already dying whose suffering–a very elastic term in euthanasia advocacy–cannot otherwise be controlled.

But once a society accepts the premise that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering, eventually concepts such as “voluntary” and “only for the terminally ill,” fall by the wayside. Look at the Netherlands, where 45% of neonatologists (according to a Lancet study) have committed infanticide and doctors engage in non voluntary euthanasia–euphemistically called “termination without request”–without fear of any significant legal or professional consequence. 

Now, a bill soon to be introduced in the South Australia Parliament–where euthanasia is always bubbling on the legislative stove–would permit people to be killed by doctors based on via instructions made, catch the irony, in a “living will.” From AdelaideAdvertiser story:

State Labor backbencher Steph Key is working on new voluntary euthanasia legislation and will meet with interest groups at the end of this month. While she stressed she was still finalising her plans, Ms Key said she would prefer the option of voluntary euthanasia outlined in a living will, as is done in Belgium, to other models in places like Switzerland or Oregon in the US that require the patient to carry out or administer euthanasia themselves. 

A living will allows a person to take control of end-of-life medical decisions by indicating if they would prefer or refuse treatment for future illnesses. Under Ms Key’s preferred model, a person would be able to state in a will that if they find themselves in “a situation where their life is intolerable in a medical sense then . . . they would like to follow through with the option of voluntary euthanasia. That doesn’t mean that you have to follow through with that necessarily or you can’t change your mind,” Ms Key said. However, she said the decision should be made before a person became too sick.

This is really insidious. Many people think they would rather die than experience a significant disability or cognitive impairment.  But when their worst fear take place, they may not feel that way at all.  But under this proposal, their no longer existing younger incarnation would be able to order their current self killed–and practically speaking, it wouldn’t really matter whether the to-be-killed person still wanted to die or not, especially if he or she couldn’t communicate well. And it would certainly open the door to putting grandma out of our or society’s financial misery.

People are so worried about becoming unloved burdens or being ill thought of if they experience a serious incapacity. Proposals like this tell them they are right.