The Melbourne Diocesan Synod has urged politicians in the Australian state of Victoria not to legalize medically assisted suicide and euthanasia. The Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill will be debated in the 40-member Legislative Council, the upper chamber of the State Parliament, next week.
The bill was passed by the lower house, the Legislative Assembly, last week after a mammoth 24-hour debate that coincided with a synod debate on the legislation. The lower house passed the bill 47-37. Voting in the upper house is thought to be much tighter.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp. reports that 19 members of the upper house support the bill and 11 oppose it. The remaining 10 members have not indicated how they will vote.
As Victorian MPs were debating the bill in the State Parliament, Melbourne Anglicans were gathered a few streets away in St. Paul’s Cathedral for their synod meeting. Medical ethicist Dr. Denise Cooper-Clarke told the synod that the bill’s proposed safeguards were inadequate, that it was inherently discriminatory, and that improved palliative care was a much safer and more compassionate way to address what have been called bad deaths.
The bill, she said, would fundamentally change attitudes to suicide at a time when the government is trying to reduce youth suicide.
After a debate, the synod voted to urge the government to increase support for palliative care, especially in regional and remote communities, Aboriginal communities, and nursing homes, and to provide more palliative-care training for health professionals. It resolved to oppose introducing a legal framework for assisted dying.
Cooper-Clarke said the legislation would cover not only the small number of extreme cases but a much broader range of circumstances, in which the suffering of the patients may not involve severe pain or physical symptoms at all.
“Elderly, frail, and sick patients are especially vulnerable to implied or explicit messages from relatives that they are a burden and that they would be ‘better off dead,’” she said. “It is naïve to assume that people always have the best interests of their relatives at heart. Elder abuse is prevalent in our society.
“Many people support assisted dying because they believe it is a compassionate response to suffering. But how is it compassionate to agree with someone who is so distressed that they wish to end their life, that yes, their life is not worth living, and yes. they would be better off dead?”
Adapted from ACNS
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
