THE quest has failed many times. The past 20 years have seen around 50 attempts to pass laws in different Australian states to allow doctors to help terminally ill people to end their lives. All have suffered defeat, three in the past year alone: in New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania. But on November 29th Victoria finally made history, when its parliament passed Australia’s first state law to legalise doctor-assisted dying.
The law, which will take effect in 2019, allows people with an advanced, incurable illness to request “assisted dying” if their suffering cannot be relieved “in a manner that the person considers tolerable”. Patients must make three successive requests for such help; doctors are banned from initiating discussion of it as an option. The original bill had proposed limiting eligibility to those who were expected to live no more than a year. Victoria’s lawmakers reduced that to six months, with a few exceptions.
Most earlier attempts to legalise assisted dying were private members’...Continue reading
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