DANIEL ANDREWS MUST BE STOPPED FROM MAKING IT LEGAL FOR VICTORIANS TO BE KILLED BY DOCTOR PRESCRIBED SUICIDE.
To supplement our last desperate plea for us all to phone our individual Victorian MP’s urging them to reject Premier Daniel Andrews’ doctor prescribed suicide legislation, we are now providing some letter- writing- points to assist you. Letters are infinitely more effective than emails !
Sample Points Against Doctor Prescribed Suicide
• Vulnerable people are in need of supportive care, pain relief, reassurance and treatment for depression. High quality medical care will be compromised once doctor prescribed suicide becomes a known alternative.
• For some vulnerable people the proposed changes will mean they feel pressured not to be a burden. There is talk of safeguards but simply the availability of the legal option of doctor prescribed suicide will negatively influence the thinking of the vulnerable and the people around them. That can’t be safeguarded against. It simply undermines the supportive care that vulnerable people need.
• Refer to the U.S. State of Oregon, the ” model ” on which the proposed Victorian legislation is modelled, where doctor prescribed suicide and euthanasia was initially introduced in very restricted circumstances and on a voluntary basis but Inquiries have shown that in practice controls are not applied, it extends to cases where it is not voluntary and value judgements by others are made on whether someone’s life is worth living. Likewise Belgium and the Netherlands.
• The Health Budget is going to be increasing with both population and life expectancies. There will be ever increasing financial pressures on hospitals and doctors that will impact decision making and communication with patients and family members.
• For the sake of allowing insurance claims, it is being proposed that doctor prescribed suicide will not be recorded; instead doctors will report incorrectly that the underlying illness caused death. You could ask how safeguards against abuse can operate effectively in these circumstances.
• Concerned with risk to people with disabilities, particularly when a disability is first acquired or diagnosed, who might think life is not worth living and request assisted suicide when it is well known that most people with disability adjust and go on to live lives worth living.
• Suicide prevention: how can we offer/promote/approve suicide for one category of people without undermining efforts to prevent suicide, including youth suicide
• Significant concern about subtle or even overt coercion of elderly by impatient heirs or those tired of caring for them to request doctor prescribed suicide. No way to protect against this possibility. No remedy for it either.
• If you can add anything of personal experience perhaps regarding the issues in hospitals flowing from workloads and poor communication (with patients, families, between medical staff). This may be put in a way that indicates it adds to your concerns with decision making around legalising doctor prescribed suicide.
Please contact us if you are also interested in reading three 1 to 2 page articles stating the case against assisted suicide including statements of MPs in the UK who decided to oppose euthanasia.
Though we quote him again and again ..Edmund Burke’s words “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men and women to do nothing ” cannot be overstated at this critical time in our history.
