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Background to the National Day of Shame
On 22 September 1996, terminally-ill Darwin man Bob Dent became the first person in the world to receive a legal, lethal, voluntary injection. His peaceful and dignified death occurred during the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (ROTI) of the Northern Territory.
The ROTI Law lasted only 5 months before the Parliament of Australia passed the Kevin Andrew’s Private Members Bill. This Bill overturned the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act. The Kevin Andrew’s Bill was passed in a conscience vote in the Australian Senate in the early hours of 27 March 1997.
The Andrew’s Bill was supported by prominent politicians in both the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party of Australia. Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition leader Kim Beazley both supported the Bill.
The Bill passed by two votes.
With the cessation of the ROTI Act,terminally-ill Australians lost their ability to seek medical assistance to die peacefully at a time and place of their choosing.
At the current time the only place where a terminally-ill Australian can seek lawful assistance to die is Switzerland. While voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal in Holland, Belgium and the state of Oregon in the US, people using these laws must be long term residents and citizens of those jurisdictions.
The National Day of Shame marks the 10th Anniversary of the overturning of the world’s first Voluntary Euthanasia law. Two days of activities have been
scheduled to ‘celebrate’ this turning point in Australian history and to call for the reintroduction of a dying with dignity law in this country.
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From
ExitInternational
More discussion from different sites worldwide out of NZ site.
http://www.ves.org.nz/newslnks.htm
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Euthanasia, defined in the Oxford Dictionary, is "gentle and easy death; bringing about of this, especially in case of incurable and painful disease". The Voluntary Euthanasia Society (Auck) Inc. believes that this should be the lawful right of the individual, in carefully defined circumstances and with the utmost safeguards, if and only if, that is their express wish. It is natural to hope that when our time comes, we shall die peacefully with dignity and without prolonged suffering. Those who do so will be fortunate, for many must still endure a long drawn out and deeply distressing process of degeneration. When the alternatives are death with dignity or death accompanied by prolonged pain or distress, common sense as well as compassion support the demand of the Society that the choice should be the legal right of the individual.
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