Victoria’s assisted dying Bill passes key upper house vote

22-18 in favour. Victoria will be the first state to pass laws that will make it legal for doctors to assist in the death of the terminally ill.

Personally I think it's long overdue, that we allow those who are suffering terrible pain and the indignity of some illnesses to have the choice of whether they wish to suffer any longer or not and empower them to choose the time of their death when they have had enough. I (as many others have) have seen first hand, the absolute decimation of spirit and dignity many end stage suffers go through while waiting and praying for that day to come when they suffer (on many levels) no more. I hope all states will come to their senses and show the same compassion and commonsense that Victoria has done.

What do others think? Yes, allow assisted dying? No, we don't want it?

 

My father had prostate cancer which invaded his bones, while looking after him he was in so much pain he asked me to shoot him ... his words have remained with me for over 20 years ...

 

I think it's great. Like Leo said, about bloody time.

 

Long overdue. Hope the other states follow very soon.

 

Long overdue. How is it going to work for people who reside interstate? Are they going to move to VIC when they are ready.

 

To stem the inflow of euthanasia tourism, you need to have resided in Victoria for 12 months and be of sound mind (specifically excluding dementia patients) and request it 3 times in a 10 Day period etc.

 

Sigh.

Anyway as everyone else said, this is long overdue. I can’t think of any genuine secular reasons not to allow this. Why should someone suffer because of another persons belief in an ancient book that says it’s not the right thing to do. As if any religion is consistent about what the right thing to do is.

 

If anything, you get to meet your maker sooner.

 

About time. I'm lucky that no one close to me has been terminally ill. However someone I know recently passed away from cancer, the photos I saw of him just before his death will forever haunt me.

He wanted to die and get it over with but apparently friends and relos were against that due to religious reasons. It is infuriating that a person is allowed to be tortured till death just to please some imaginary sky daddy.

Can't wait till we have an atheist majority of voters in this country.

 

How many countries where religion is outlawed or are atheist have euthanasia legislation?

 

If there is a god, which I don’t believe there is, I’d expect to meet the most stunningly flawed individual you could possibly imagine. Picture Bruce Willis waking up a divorced alcoholic at the start of every Die Hard movie and you’re getting close to what I see in my minds eye.

 

NSW recently introduced a similar Bill but it was defeated in the Legislative Council by 20 votes to 19. Very disappointing. I think the next time it comes up on the agenda will be in 2019.

 

@Scott No Mates there aren't any countries free from religion with atheist majority as far as I know. We do have the commi countries but people are not exactly free to express their opinion there.

Anyway, this is the best I could find on the matter:

10 Countries Where Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Are Legal

Mapped: The world's most (and least) religious countries

Most countries in the list where euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal happen to be in the list of 20 least religious countries. Sorry, this may not be accurate but I couldn't find much info on this matter.

 

I think this is awful. There's no reason that people can not have a well managed, good quality, low to no pain death. There is the option to be placed into a medically induced coma if pain is an issue in modern palliative care wards. Where end of life is not discussed with a patient before decline or they refuse pain medication then a more painful end is possible.
This makes my heart break for the following reasons:
1) The focus on medicine should be cure
2) Where cure is not possible then pain management and care should be the focus
3) If someone is in pain, and it is not managed correctly, then it would be easy for them to ask for an early death. Give the same person pain medication and their fight to live returns fast.
4) This means people are killed where treatment may otherwise be possible.
5) This saves the government money and takes away their responsibility to look after a country's people.
6) Where is the impetus for medical research and searching out answers to people's suffering if you can easily end their lives?
7) Palliative care gives the patient and their loved ones precious time to say goodbye

 

@hobartchic - an induced coma until organ failure is not quality of life, it is prolonging life for the sake of it, there is no benefit to anyone other than the living who may afterwards regret how long their loved one had to hang on.

 

Sickness and quality of life will always be a difficult thing but placing someone in a medically induced coma means that you can always bring them back and the person does not suffer pain. I do not consider this a selfish thing to do at all.

 

This is ethically slippery, do you kill every one who is sick because you deem them to have poor quality of life? The nazis did just this, killed anyone disabled or who they deemed ill.

 

It is not someone else's decision to make, the patient has to ask for the hall pass.

 

I did a study on this twenty years ago when it was a hot topic (the NT Right to Die Legislation was overturned by the Fed Govt). What I found was that there were valid reasons to support both sides of the debate, but that there were far more reasons against legalising euthanasia than there were reasons to support it.

My own anal-retentive semantic understanding of the issues meant that I could personally accept some of the legislated "safeguards" against a couple of the matters raised against legalising it, but one that niggles me to this day was the clause that proposed a penalty for anyone found guilty of {insert legal phrase here} what I call "Bumping off Granny" by relatives over-keen on accessing Grandma's assets. In other words, the Northern Territory recognised that there was scope to use their legislation to commit murder.

You dont need to be religious to be morally opposed to murder, do you. There are reasons given against legalising euthanasia that are not just for religious people. In other threads, you have recognised that Humanity does not have to be practising a religion in order to have socially acceptable morals and values.

Another issue at the time was that the media regularly found that around 70% of the Australian population supported the bill in question, but I personally surveyed some random people, mostly students around the campus. OK, not a large sample but acceptable within the paramaters of the particular assessment. Not one single person had read the Bill or its summary, and only four persons could accurately identify the definition of euthanasia that the bill referred to (there were four different types at that time) from the multiple choices provided. iirc >90% of my sample stated they supported the NT Right to Die Legislation.