The vast majority of Christians are opposed to euthanasia and would be deeply concerned about last night’s passing of the second reading stage in the South Australian Upper House of a bill to legalise voluntary euthanasia, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) said today.
ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace said reported claims by the group ‘Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Euthanasia’ that many Christians support euthanasia give a false impression regarding the true views of the overwhelming majority of Christians.
“ACL has battled strongly against euthanasia being legalised for years at both State and Federal levels and before numerous parliamentary inquiries. In consulting with churches and Christian leaders we have been left in no doubt that the vast majority of Christians are opposed to euthanasia,” Mr Wallace said.
“It has become a tactic by some groups to assume a representation that they don’t have. We saw this in the charter of rights debate and we are again seeing this in the current debate over euthanasia in South Australia. These tactics are clearly designed to confuse people about the true stance of the overwhelming majority of Christians on these matters.”
Mr Wallace said the SA voluntary euthanasia bill put forward by Greens MP Mark Parnell is one of the most extreme ACL had come across and he urged SA parliamentarians to reject it.
“I understand that under the provisions of this dangerous bill people don’t even have to be terminally ill to be euthanised and could conceivably end up being killed for a wide range of minor conditions,” Mr Wallace said. “Some of the provisions, such as falsifying death certificates, are akin to the terrible Victorian euthanasia bill which was resoundingly defeated in that State in August last year.
“Disturbingly, if passed, the bill would allow the killing of any person who has ‘an illness, injury or other medical condition that irreversibly impairs the person's quality of life so that life has become intolerable to that person’. This test is very subjective, and could conceivably include arthritis, or depression following the loss of a loved one. The bill also leaves it up to the treating doctor whether or not to refer the patient to a psychiatrist for an evaluation.”
Mr Wallace said that, if the bill succeeds, the ‘right to die’ would quickly become the ‘duty to die’ under the new culture legalised euthanasia inevitably creates.
“As a society, we should be seeking to ease people’s pain through better palliative care, not promoting killing as an alternative to helping them. We should also be considering the message euthanasia laws send to the disabled and elderly. No society has the right to create an expectation that you should terminate your life if you would otherwise be an inconvenience to society.”
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