2010 Most Popular: Yes, Christians do support voluntary euthanasia

Posted on December 30th, 2010 at 6:00 am

By Ian Wood

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but it is true.

74% of people who claim to have a religion strongly support the right of doctors to provide a lethal dose, according to a 2007 Newspoll. Exclude religion and we find a massive 91% are in favour of assisted dying.

Included in this support are four out of five Anglican and perhaps more surprisingly, three out of four Catholics.

Now, the question posed was: Should a hopelessly ill person, with suffering that cannot be relieved, and no chance of recovering, have the option of a doctor providing a lethal dose?   Our friends in the Australian Christian Lobby will say this is biased, but it is precisely people like this who need the choice of legal VE to be available as an option, in conjunction with good palliative care.

My campaigning for legal VE began in 2004, when my Mother, after eight years with Alzheimer ¢â‚¬â„¢s, forgot how to eat, and the only way of dying at this stage is death by starvation. What an indictment of our society!

Christian Rossiter was recently given the same means of death in a WA Court decision, but was fortunate to die from another cause, before starving.

Then early in 2008, I came across a photo of French woman Chantal Sebire.

Chantal was pleading to be allowed to die after eight years of hell on earth from intranasal cancer. That photo really motivated me!

By this time I had come to realise that the main reason why our Members of Parliament are so far behind and so out of touch with the opinions of the average Australian, is that they are unduly influenced by a very vocal minority of the religious hierarchy and fundamentalists.

So, together with my friend, Rev Trevor Bensch, a retired Baptist Minister and hospital chaplain, Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Euthanasia was formed, to give the silent majority a voice.

It is fascinating to contemplate the objections raised by these people who oppose the choice of a peaceful, quick, dignified assisted death.

They include:
 ¢â‚¬Å“Thou Shalt not Kill, ¢â‚¬  and completely ignore the bloodshed rife in the Old Testament. The story of every person in the world being drowned, except for Noah and his family, is just one example.

 ¢â‚¬Å“God has allocated us a time span for life on Earth ¢â‚¬  and completely ignore the fact that operations, dialysis, insulin, even antibiotics, are all human interventions that alter our lifespan.

 ¢â‚¬Å“The slippery slope. ¢â‚¬  Very much a  ¢â‚¬Å“what if ¢â‚¬  objection, and again ignoring facts that in Oregon, USA, where Physician Assisted Dying has been legal since 1992, there is no slippery slope, no abuse of the supposed  ¢â‚¬Ëœvulnerable ¢â‚¬â„¢ and Oregon has one of the best palliative care systems in USA.

Members of Christians Supporting Choice for VE believe that love and compassion for a suffering fellow human should take precedence over religious dogma.

No government should seek to deny the Right of any individual to have some control over their final decision at the end of their life.

Oregon, Washington State, Montana, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, all have some form of assisted dying that is working well.   Are we so different in Australia?

 ¢â‚¬Å“Euthanasia is not a choice between life and death, but a choice between different ways of dying, ¢â‚¬  said Jacques Pohier, a Catholic priest excommunicated for his views on Voluntary Euthanasia.

When WA MLCs come to debate and vote on the Robin Chapple ¢â‚¬â„¢s VE Bill next week, will they, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, choose to help the dying, or pass by on the other side of the road?

This article was originally published by wangle on September 15, 2010. Ian Wood, a retired pharmacist, is the Coordinator and a co-founder of Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Euthanasia. For more info visit  www.christiansforve.org.au