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SENATE Official Committee Hansard COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES SENATE Official Committee Hansard LEGAL AND CONSITUTIONAL LEGISLATION COMMITTEE Reference: Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996 FRIDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 1997 BY AUTHORITY OF THE SENATE CANBERRA 1997 Friday, 14 February 1997 SENATE—Legislation L&C 247 SENATE Friday, 14 February 1997 LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL LEGISLATION COMMITTEE Portfolios: Attorney-General; Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Members: Senator Ellison (Chair), Senators Abetz, Bolkus, Bourne, McKiernan and O’Chee Substitute member: Senator McGauran to substitute for Senator O’Chee on 13 and 14 February 1997 Participating members: Senators Brown, Bob Collins, Colston, Coonan, Cooney, Ferris, Harradine, Heffernan, Margetts, McGauran, Minchin, Neal and Tambling Senator Woodley and all Opposition senators not currently members of the committee, for the consideration of the committee’s inquiry into the Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996 The committee met at 8.25 a.m. Matter referred by the Senate: Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996. SOMERVILLE, Dr Margaret, Professor in the Faculty of Law and Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada CHAIR—The committee is continuing its inquiries into the Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996. Our next witness is Dr Margaret Somerville, who we are linking up with in Canada. I understand that Dr Somerville is now on the line. Dr Somerville can you hear me clearly? Dr Somerville—Yes, I can. CHAIR—Present here are myself, Senator Chris Ellison, a senator from Western Australia, chairman of the committee; Senator Jim McKiernan, a senator from Western Australia who is deputy chair of the committee; Senator Brian Harradine, a senator from Tasmania; and we will be joined shortly by other senators who have been participating in these hearings. You are our first witness for today. I welcome you and thank you for giving your evidence. Would you please make an opening statement to the committee. Dr Somerville—I am resident in Montreal, Canada, but I am an Australian citizen. My current position is Gale Professor of Law and also a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. I am also the Founding Director of the McGill Centre for Medicine Ethics and Law. I have been involved in research, teaching and public work, particularly media work, in areas of medicine, ethics and law for over 20 years. I publish quite widely in the field. I have had a particular interest in euthanasia for the last six or seven years. CHAIR—Is there anything further you would like to say, by way of an opening statement? Dr Somerville—Perhaps just to summarise where I come from on this, because I do usually instruct my audiences that I think it is only honest for us all to put on the table what our own personal stance is on this issue. My own stance is that I think it is a very bad thing for society to legalise euthanasia. In other words, I am anti-euthanasia. Perhaps I should explain why I have come to that conclusion. LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL L&C 248 SENATE—Legislation Friday, 14 February 1997 One of the questions that I asked myself in researching this area was: why are we looking at legalising euthanasia now—right now—at the end of the 20th century? If you think about the condition of the person who wants euthanasia and the conditions that are advocated by people who believe that legalising euthanasia would be a good thing, the strongest case for it is: you have a person who is terminally ill, they are suffering, they are a competent adult and they know what they are doing, they request euthanasia, they consent to it and they want to die—and we are able to kill the person. There is nothing new in any of those factors, yet our type of society has prohibited euthanasia for at least 2,000 years. So I think we have to ask: why have we suddenly thought that this might be a good idea? I believe that the factors that are influencing this are very broad societal factors, even though what we normally see and debate are very personal individual factors. The reason that we debate through the individual is partly to do with the fact that our modern public square is television. You can put a dying person on television. I was in Australia a few weeks ago. I saw the woman who had the skin cancer. Your heart goes out to that woman and you can think, ‘Well, gosh, if I were in that situation, maybe that is what I would want too.’ We had exactly the same thing here in Canada with the most courageous, wonderful young woman dying of amyotropic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease. She could not breathe. She could not swallow. She wanted euthanasia. That is a very powerful pull on all of us, whatever our position on euthanasia, towards thinking that, if it were to be legalised, these would be just the sorts of cases where that is what you would do. Yet I still believe that this would be a tremendous mistake for society. And taking this stance does not mean that you are not sympathetic to those people. The reason I believe this is because you look at the most fundamental norm or value on which our types of societies are based it is that we do not kill each other. No matter how compassionate and merciful your reasons for carrying out euthanasia, it still alters that norm that we do not kill each other to one where we do not usually, but in some cases we do. I simply do not think we can afford to do that because of what it would do to societal values. So it is not just because I am worried about abuse of it euthanasia were implemented, which is where a lot of people place their argument. They say, ‘Let’s put very stringent safeguards.’ I think it is inherently wrong to do it, so it is not a question of safeguards. It is only when something is inherently right that you then say, ‘Let’s make sure that, being inherently right, it is always used rightfully.’ So I am not even into that. I think it would be inherently wrong for us to do this, and that is why we should not do it. I would also add that—there is so much that one can say in this area, and I am sure you have heard a great deal of it—we have to be very careful with definition. I think there has been a very unfortunate and, I must say, at least in certain instances in North America, intentional blurring of the distinction between allowing someone to die when that is the right thing to do, because we have no right to impose treatment on them or to continue treatment, and calling that euthanasia and then saying, ‘It doesn’t matter how the person dies. What’s the difference between withdrawing a respirator and giving a lethal injection?’ I think there is a world of difference between those two situations and we have to be very careful to analyse and show those differences. The issue is not if we die; we all eventually die. Life is a lethal condition. The issue is how we die. There is one way of how people die that we have never permitted—that is, a physician, LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL Friday, 14 February 1997 SENATE—Legislation L&C 249 in particular, kills them. Yet that is what we are thinking of doing in euthanasia. That is what you have done in the Northern Territory. As well, this blurring between suicide and assisted suicide is another example of the same blurring of distinctions to make something seem acceptable by association with something else. It is not that we do not find suicide unacceptable, but we do not criminalise it. I think it is right not to criminalise suicide, but there is an entirely different moral order involved when it is solely the person themselves. When you institutionalise this, moreover, particularly when you legalise it, you make it part of your fundamental societal values structure. There are many reasons to oppose euthanasia. One other thing I would like to add is that I am the strongest advocate of pain relief that you can imagine. In fact, I believe it should be a criminal offence to fail to give adequate pain relief to people. I also believe people have an absolute right to refuse treatment. I do not think, however, that you should say that because you like to call that a right to die that means that they have a right to be killed. There is a very big difference between the fact that we all eventually die and whether somebody else is going to kill us. CHAIR—Thank you, Dr Somerville. Senator Eric Abetz, representing Tasmania, has just joined us. May I start the questions by asking: is there no moral difference between, on the one hand, withdrawing or withholding treatment or administering a pain killer that may lead to death and, on the other, voluntary euthanasia? We have had evidence from Dr Helga Kuhse, Mr Peter Singer and various others who advanced the so-called moral equivalence argument, saying that there is no moral difference. What is your view? Dr Somerville—I think there is a major moral difference, but where the confusion can arise is that you can actually postulate an instance of euthanasia that is withdrawal of treatment. An example would be a case that we had here in Quebec of a young woman who had had irreversible Guillain-Barre syndrome.
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