Western Australia Legalizes Lethal Injection Euthanasia

This article was published by National Review online on December 10, 2019.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

The euthanasia darkness seeps into Western Australia. From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation story:

Under the scheme, to be eligible a person would have to be terminally ill with a condition that is causing intolerable suffering and is likely to cause death within six months, or 12 months for a neurodegenerative condition. 

A person would have to make two verbal requests and one written request. Those requests would have to be signed off by two doctors who are independent of each other. 

The choice of lethal medication would be a clinical decision from an approved list of drugs. Self-administration would be the preferred method, but in a departure from the Victorian regime, a patient could choose for a medical practitioner to administer the drug.

“Intolerable suffering” has no objective test. It is whatever a patient says it is — even if the illness is not the reason for the suicide/homicide request.

Where will this lead? Over time, into the bottomless moral pit into which the Netherlands, Belgium, and increasingly Canada have already jumped.

I can’t escape the irony that people seem to lack faith in doctors to care for patients properly and ameliorate their suffering, but ironically, will allow these same doctors to kill them. Bizarre.