MPS should examine facts, not crystal balls
‘Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future,’’ said the Nobel Prizewinning physicist Niels Bohr. Maryan Street should have heeded this tongue-in-cheek warning when she forecast that the End of Life Choice Bill would become law this year. Prediction is always hard, but it’s near impossible when it’s based on the kind of partial information found in her article (This choice will
happen, Jan 4).
The stakes are high with this bill, which would legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide, and the public and the MPS who will be voting on it need better information than Street provided. So let’s look at some of the key issues MPS might consider.
First, they’re likely to look overseas and see that laws like these are rejected more often than they pass, because most lawmakers look at the evidence and decide these practices are just too risky. Street tells us that Victoria passed an assisted dying law in 2017, but not that similar laws were rejected by South Australia in 2016, Tasmania in 2017, New South Wales in 2017, and the Northern Territories in 2018.
Second, MPS will probably look at the ‘‘Sponsor’s Report’’ on the bill, by ACT leader David Seymour. He suggests limiting the bill to cover terminal illness only, and making it conditional on a public referendum. But it is wrong and misleading to say, as Street does, that his report is ‘‘making some critical amendments’’, as though these have been accepted. They are simply Seymour’s ideas; only Parliament can change the bill now.
Third, MPS will be looking at how similar laws have worked overseas. In Oregon, which legalised assisted suicide for terminal illness, 55 per cent of patients accessing assisted suicide said one of their reasons was fear ‘‘of being a burden on family, friends and caregivers’’. This number has been rising steadily.
This kind of law can also expand. In Belgium, euthanasia was originally limited to adults, but was extended to children in 2014, with some limitations. The numbers accessing assisted suicide have also grown steadily in places such as Washington state, with 196 deaths in 2017 compared with 64 in 2009. Street herself notes how disappointed she will be if ‘‘grievous and irremediable’’ medical conditions are no longer eligible for euthanasia and assisted suicide, and if a limited version of the bill is passed it would be surprising if pro-euthanasia campaigners didn’t try to expand the eligibility criteria in future.
There’s much more detail about the evidence, and analysis of the bill, in our submission; in summary, it shows that vulnerable people are at an unacceptable risk of wrongful death under laws such as these.
Lastly, MPS will probably ask themselves what voters think, and realise there is significant public opposition to the bill.
‘‘Vulnerable people are at an unacceptable risk of wrongful death under laws such as these.’’