The ACT Human Rights Commission wants children to access euthanasia.
I kid you not.
This radical and dangerous recommendation is in a submission from the taxpayer-funded commission to a parliamentary inquiry that is looking into Labor-Greens legislation to legalise killing by doctors.
Sadly, it seems the Liberals are silent.
The ACT government has indicated that if euthanasia becomes law, which it certainly will in Australia’s most woke jurisdiction, the inclusion of children would not be considered until three years after.
The Human Rights Commission doesn’t support the delay.
The territory’s Human Rights Commissioner, Penelope Mathew, Children and Young People Commissioner Jodie Griffiths-Cook and Discrimination, Disability, Health and Community Services Commissioner Karen Toohey have argued that terminally ill minors should have the right to “voluntarily end their life with dignity in the same circumstances as adults”.
The commissioners refer to euthanasia as “health care”. How Orwellian.
This of course ignores the fact that modern palliative care, if properly funded, allows the overwhelming majority of dying people to be cared for pain free and with dignity.
But Australian state and territory governments have opted for the cheap and nasty solution of euthanasia with the ACT the latest.
It’s ironic that one of the human rights commissioners supporting euthanasia for kids is the “disability” commissioner.
Disability groups have historically opposed even adult euthanasia because they know it is a threat to people who are less than perfect.
Euthanasia advocate Professor Peter Singer was famously confronted by disability advocates on the ABC’s Q&A program in 2016, angry about his views on legalising the euthanasia of disabled babies.
Euthanasia proponents like to say there is no slippery slope but the more euthanasia laws are implemented the looser the rules become.
The ACT is proposing doing away with any time limit so a terminally ill person can immediately access assisted suicide rather than waiting until their prognosis is for six to 12 months to live as is the case in other states.
It’s not unknown for someone who has been given a prognosis of terminal illness to live much longer than their prognosis or even for that prognosis to be a misdiagnosis.
But hey, pushing people to consent to be bumped off at the earliest possible moment seems the priority.
The ACT is also proposing allowing the killing of people who are not terminally ill so that dementia patients can be eligible for a lethal injection.
The ACT bill also proposes allowing social workers and counsellors to initiate conversations about assisted suicide.
There’s nothing like someone sowing the seed of suicide into the minds of a vulnerable child.
With Australia in the grip of a youth suicide epidemic, what is the ACT Human Rights Commission thinking?
For decades euthanasia was rejected by Australian politicians because it is open to abuse and coercion and because proper palliative care is the answer for the overwhelming majority of people facing end of life.
The so-called “right to die” becomes a duty to die for the vulnerable who might feel they are a burden to their family and to the health system.
Family First opposes euthanasia because properly funded palliative care is the solution to the possibility of a painful death in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Euthanasia-free end-of-life-care also greatly reduces the possibility of wrongful deaths, an inevitable outcome of euthanasia.
For years euthanasia proponents bristled when the slippery slope argument was raised.
Now they grease the slope.
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