Mercy Killing
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
3 Oct 2010
Brown death has again infected the Federal Parliament with renewed talk about euthanasia. Despite the fact that moves to legalize mercy killing have stalled in most places overseas, the Greens have again begun their push for it.
Most Australians are not sure what euthanasia means. It is often presented as allowing people to die with dignity. It is something else.
No Christian is opposed to dying with dignity. The pro-life forces are totally opposed to prolonging unnecessary suffering. Opponents of euthanasia support pain relief, keeping patients comfortable, even when as a by product death comes sooner.
Euthanasia is not a compassionate response to suffering, because it eliminates the sufferer and does not work alongside the patient to help medically and personally.
Bob Carr, the former Premier of New South Wales, was not a regular supporter of pro-life causes, but he was and is an opponent of legalizing euthanasia. The Prime Minister Julie Gillard has similar hesitations. Carr realised that euthanasia is not a private, personal choice, but a public act with public consequences; first of all for family and friends and then more widely throughout society for the way we view the sick, the elderly, the disabled and the way we regard doctors.
Carr realises it is impossible to legalize voluntary euthanasia without also legalizing involuntary euthanasia, quietly killing patients who have not consented. This was why a House of Lords committee in the U.K., representing a variety of views recommended against legalization of euthanasia.
When euthanasia was legalized in the Netherlands all the talk was of strict controls and tight regulation. In practice this was quickly ignored and many vulnerable people are now eliminated without their consent; the unconscious, disabled babies, children and people suffering dementia and psychiatric illnesses. There were 2636 euthanasia deaths in 2009, an increase of 45 per cent from 2003.
From the middle nineties a practice developed in Holland where many doctors did not report assisted suicide and euthanasia, making it difficult to ascertain how many are eliminated without their consent. An estimate from 2005 suggests 550 involuntary euthanasias annually.
Permission to kill those who do not want to continue would put pressure on those feeling useless and depressed that they are only a burden on others and have a duty to die.
Theists believe life is a gift from God which we have to reverence, which we have no right to terminate. If we destroy this principle we shall reap a whirlwind of unexpected change.
