https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/bills/Pages/bill-details.aspx?pk=3891
An Act to provide for, and regulate access to, voluntary assisted dying for persons with a terminal illness; to establish the Voluntary Assisted Dying Board; and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.
Notice of Motion: Tue 12 Oct 2021
- Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill (2021)
On the 19th of October 2021, the NSW Liberal Partyroom decided to allow a conscience vote on the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill. Presumably both the Premier Dominic Perrottet and the Opposition Leader Chris Minns both oppose the bill but sending this to a conscience vote, means that the passage or non-passage of the bill into law effectively negates any political effect that this is going to have. I think that the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill is really just another turn on the euphemism treadmill, after having previously seen that other voluntary euthanasia bills have in the past been politically untenable.
I hate this bill. I hate that the parliament is considering this bill. I hate that we as a society have reached a point where reducing an individual's suffering has priority over other moral goals in all cases. It is almost as if we have decided that individual liberty has become the highest ideal, where literally no duties, no responsibilities, no debts, and no relationships to other people are even allowed to define the self. Almost as a case of irony, individual liberty which is set up as the highest ideal, often leads to other crimes, atrocities, and murder, committed in the name of said liberty; against people who stand in the way. While that might not exactly be the proposed case here, the passage of this bill into legislation, will lead to collateral damage.
One of the common refrains from people who want there to be legal euthanasia, is that other people shouldn't impose their morality upon them; yet at the same time, changing the legislation requires a different set of morality to be imposed upon the world because at some fundamental level (and especially if the subject of the legislation is the termination of someone's life) all law is the imposition of some kind of morality somewhere. Since I'm not going to be allowed to play in the area of the sanctity of human life (because for the purposes of this discussion that's not allowable or admittable) then I'm going to lay out the consequences.
The argument put forward for euthanasia is that it eliminates the pain and suffering of the person who wants to end their own life. That says something profound about what kind of moral product that suffering is, but since that's not allowable or admittable for the purposes of this discussion, we're going to have to assume that there is some amount of utility in the elimination of suffering.
https://www.utilitarianism.com/rnsmart-negutil.html
Admittedly, NU (Negative Utilitarianism) as a conservative political principle has some advantages, in that people more readily agree on evils than on goods; but any clarity it brings to ethics is bought at the expense of allowing certain absurd and even wicked moral judgments.
- Ninian Smart, Mind Vol 67, No 268, (Oct., 1958)
The problem with trying to do any kind of measure of the utility of pain and suffering is that although pain and suffering exist, they are impossible to measure empirically. Pain and suffering are experienced by an individual and that experience can not be actually shared with another. As the experience of pain and suffering can neither be empirically measured or shared, then there is actually no calculable metric for determining what level of pain and suffering exists. People when being given pain medication will be asked to rate levels of pain against their own experience but that experience can only exist within the confines of their own existence. Thus, what you actually have is a subjective measure of a thing; which is a bad thing to be basing legislation on.
When you consider that the person experiencing pain and suffering is also a self-interested individual who exists at the centre of the universe (the centre of the observable universe is about 19mm behind the front of people's corneas), then any legislation which is going to exist, can only respond to the wishes of self-centred individuals. If that is the basis of legislation, then we move into very very rocky waters.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070710/
Euthanasia or assisted suicide—and sometimes both—have been legalized in a small number of countries and states. In all jurisdictions, laws and safeguards were put in place to prevent abuse and misuse of these practices. Prevention measures have included, among others, explicit consent by the person requesting euthanasia, mandatory reporting of all cases, administration only by physicians (with the exception of Switzerland), and consultation by a second physician.
The present paper provides evidence that these laws and safeguards are regularly ignored and transgressed in all the jurisdictions and that transgressions are not prosecuted. For example, about 900 people annually are administered lethal substances without having given explicit consent, and in one jurisdiction, almost 50% of cases of euthanasia are not reported
- J. Pereira, MBChB MSc, National Center for Biotechnology Information, US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health (Apr 2011)
Non-voluntary euthanasia is likely regarded as a crime in all legal jurisdictions where euthanasia is on the books. However, where you have self-interested parties who benefit from someone's death, which might include children who stand to inherit, or insurance companies who have a profit motive that benefits from clearing bad risks from the books, then obtaining the voluntary consent of the individual concerned who is going to be the subject of euthanasia looks increasingly murky.
How for instance do you prove in a court of law, that someone who might be suggestible to the influence of others would make a request for voluntary assisted death that they would not have otherwise considered? How can you question someone after the fact? How can you even get a sensible answer from the parties who are still alive when you consider that they are self-interested and stand to benefit?
Older people might already feel that they are a burden on others and when you have self-interested parties who benefit from someone's death, then there could very well be subtle familial pressures placed upon someone? Ticking a box or signing a document is hardly a guarantee that the person requesting assisted death has actually done so voluntarily and my twenty plus years in and around Family Law (either inside the court system or working in the field of forensic accounting) leads me to reach the conclusion that all that would happen is that self-interested parties would bricolage the necessary paperwork to make it nice and legal.
I am not really swayed by emotional appeals on behalf on somebody who is dying slowly in agony from cancer having relief because even after having seen my own mum suffer through the very late stages of pancreatic cancer and going through palliative care, I can not arrive at the conclusion that allowing a bill like this to pass into legislation when it is guaranteed by real world evidence that there will be some innocent people whose lives will be terminated for the object of profit or inheritance is a price that is worth paying. I do not think that that is just.
If the law fails at being just then what you have is bad law. In this case you would have bad law which by action, results in people being killed. As far as I am aware, people generally die if they are killed. Also as far as I am aware, being killed is generally an undoable action. The person who has been killed unjustly can not speak for themselves. The people responsible for coercing someone into voluntary assisted dying, aren't very likely to prosecute themselves and even if they were to suffer their own fit of conscious, then they can not bring someone back.
I would argue that if people have a genuine concern about the supposed indignity of suffering and poor quality of life, then a better cause would be to go about improving people's quality of life. Presumably if physical pain is one kind of suffering and the protection of dignity as self‐respect and respect for choice would imply that voluntary assisted dying leads to more respect for human freedom and fewer violations of dignity. However, I simply do not see that as holding up in the real world and if you are going to accept that there is utility in the elimination of suffering, then you also must accept that the people who will be paying the price to allow that, will have no recourse and no right to remedy whatsoever.
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