From
The Age, Melbourne
May 16, 2005
Denying people access to information is at odds with democratic
rights.
If the new Spanish film The Sea Inside teaches us anything,
it is that no amount of law and legislation can prevent a person
who wants to die from devising the ways and means to take their
own life.
Whether it be laws such as the Northern Territory's Rights of
the Terminally Act, which promoted choice, or the Suicide Related
Materials Offences Amendment to the Crimes Act now before the
Senate, which takes choice away, laws can be avoided. The Sea
Inside provides remarkable insight into why and how.
The life and death of lead character and real-life person Ramon
Sampedro has long been a cause celebre in Spain. Paralysed from
the neck down from a diving accident at 26, Sampedro spent his
next 28 years as, in his words, a head attached to a corpse.
Deeply resentful of being forced to live a life that he defined
as having little quality, Sampedro repeatedly petitioned the
Spanish and European courts. Repeatedly, Sampedro was denied
permission to ask for assistance to die, a request he believed
he had the right to make. The law disagreed.
Most people believe in death with dignity. In this, Sampedro
was not exceptional. At the end of the day it is of little importance
that he was not terminally ill. Rather, what mattered to him
was that his life had so little dignity, that death was a preferable
option.
And on this latter point, Sampedro still cannot be singled out.
For he was neither the first - nor shall he be the last - person
to take matters into his own hands when the law fails.
It seems important to point out that even if other states had
followed the Northern Territory's lead and had legislated for
voluntary euthanasia, a person in Sampedro's situation would
never have qualified to use it.
To benefit from the act, you had to be terminally ill. Sampedro's
self-determined poor quality of life would not have entered
the equation. This raises the question of what's law got to
do with it, if such constraints apply? Well very little - as
long as you know what to do.
While everyone knows that rope is available and hanging works
- one need only look at the national suicide statistics that
show hanging as the most common means of suicide for all ages
- the real question is, who wants to die by hanging when their
time comes? Not I, nor anyone I know.
Rather, what most people who have given any thought to how they
might wish to die - the elderly, the sick and those with diminished
life quality - say is that control, peace and dignity are what
count.
To achieve these, though, we must know our options. And it is
this right to the most basic information our Big Brother Federal
Government led by Justice Minister Chris Ellison is now seeking
to take away.
Under the new Crimes Act amendments, it will be illegal to use
the telephone, fax, email or internet to find out information
about your end-of-life options. This type of government determination
of what we can and can't read is nothing short of extraordinary
in a free country.
So how would Ramon Sampedro have faired if he had been an Australian
today?
First, he would have needed to get information about his options
without using the phone, fax, email and the net. Difficult,
but not impossible. Best-selling books such as Derek Humphry's
Final Exit, available at your local bookshop, contain all that
the Sampedros of this world need to know.
Second, because he was a quadriplegic and unable to do things
for himself - Ramon Sampedro needed his friends. He needed enough
people willing to risk legal persecution to help him. In The
Sea Inside we see Sampedro on his death bed, drinking his potassium
cyanide by a straw from a glass beside his bed, while his anonymous,
able-bodied and loyal friends toast him with champagne.
What we don't see is the thousands of strangers who bought keys
to his apartment, as a strategy to deflect the gaze and blame
away from those who did help him.
So while the Australian Government moves heaven and earth to
deny honest Australians honest information, luckily, the real
power lies with the people. And, as the Get Up Stand Up generation
showed everyone in the '60s, people power cannot be stopped,
not even by a politician.
Dabble on, minister.
Fiona Stewart is co-author (with Philip Nitschke) of Killing
Me Softly: Voluntary Euthanasia and the Road to the Peaceful
Pill.
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