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Further implications
In the popular mind, euthanasia is normally seen as an act taken to end the suffering of a terminally ill patient at that persons request. That is the manner in which most opinion polls in Australia couch their questions when seeking to gauge public opinion on the question.
The real life experience of most proponents of euthanasia in Australia generally centres on having witnessed the distress of family members or friends who have died suffering conditions that were not fully responsive to palliative care. In circumstances such as these, euthanasia is not generally seen as suicide as the patient is in imminent likelihood of death. (In the US state of Oregon the law actually states that the patients death as a consequence of the medical condition being endured must be anticipated within the next six months.)
However, there are also those who are suffering from severely debilitating conditions which are not imminently fatal and yet result in dramatically reduced quality of life. In The Netherlands, for example, those suffering intractable depression are eligible for euthanasia.
Once this category of patient is considered a candidate for euthanasia, as is the case in The Netherlands and Belgium, then the act is better termed physician-assisted suicide.
Before the question can be properly addressed in this country there needs to be clarification of what, if any, change to the law is actually being sought.
Suicide is no longer a crime in any Australian jurisdiction; however, that was not intended as a legal sanctioning of the act, rather as an acknowledgement that the law could take no meaningful action against someone who was dead and that criminalising suicide made it more difficult for the suicidal person to receive help. Assisting suicide remains a crime under Australian law.
If this continues to be the case, then Australian legislators can expect the terms of any euthanasia law passed in Australia that is similar to the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act to be challenged because it excludes those suffering from conditions which are severely debilitating but not immediately fatal.
Another complication of the euthanasia debate is that in both The Netherlands and Belgium, informed consent is no longer always required. In both jurisdictions it is possible to euthanise those suffering from dementia and Dutch statistics indicate that a significant number of those euthanised have not requested that their lives be ended.
Both these developments physician-assisted suicide of the non-terminally ill and euthanasia without consent are concerning. The first because it appears to pave the way for physician-assisted suicide on grounds determined solely by the patient and the second because it appears to give the power to determine when a life is worth living to the physician. We need an informed community-wide consensus on such profound issues.