Posted on 08/31/2006 6:50:45 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
SOUTH Australia's Parliament has voted to block the internet version of a speech from Australian Democrats MP Sandra Kanck which detailed ways to commit suicide.
The Government last night presented a motion to Parliament's upper house which called for Ms Kanck's comments not to be displayed on Parliament's website.
The motion was passed 10 votes to nine, with the Liberal opposition voting against the proposal on the grounds it would set a dangerous precedent.
The speech will be included in the Parliament's hansard but deleted from the Hansard version placed on the internet.
The vote followed a decision by state Cabinet to prevent Ms Kanck's controversial comments from becoming widely available.
On Wednesday, Ms Kanck used the protection of parliamentary privilege to detail how people could commit suicide, saying she wanted to challenge federal laws.
Under Commonwealth law, it is illegal to distribute information about suicide by electronic means – but such material can be given face to face, or provided in a letter.
By giving her address in SA's Legislative Council, Ms Kanck's speech was required to be recorded in the Hansard and also on Parliament's website – contravening the federal law.
Ms Kanck, a life member of SA's Voluntary Euthanasia Society, said she wanted to provoke a "constitutional clash" between the federal and SA parliaments that would result in the federal law being declared unconstitutional.
But Premier Mike Rann described her action as shameful.
"Even though the experts told her about the damage she might do she decided to go ahead with it anyway," he said.
"That demonstrates a shameful lack of responsibility because if just one person follows the methods she outlined in the Parliament, she will have a death on her conscience."
Mr Kanck remained defiant today and said the Government had shown it was out of touch with the community in its moves against her speech.
Frankly, I'm more concerned about the Culture of DisrespectTM, which seeks to prevent people from controlling their own lives and destinies.
You mean, like in Holland?
?
You know, Holland where "voluntary" euthanasia has led to the deaths of God only knows how many because they've been judged by doctors as worthy of death.
Nothing quite like choice, is there?
...documents the prevalence of involuntary euthanasia in Holland, as well as the fact that, to a large degree, doctors have taken over end-of-life decision making regarding euthanasia. The data indicate that, despite long-standing, court-approved euthanasia guidelines developed to protect patients, abuse has become an accepted norm. According to the Remmelink Report, in 1990:
2,300 people died as the result of doctors killing them upon request (active, voluntary euthanasia).(7)
400 people died as a result of doctors providing them with the means to kill themselves (physician-assisted suicide).(8)
1,040 people (an average of 3 per day) died from involuntary euthanasia, meaning that doctors actively killed these patients without the patients' knowledge or consent.(9)
14% of these patients were fully competent. (10)
72% had never given any indication that they would want their lives terminated. (11)
In 8% of the cases, doctors performed involuntary euthanasia despite the fact that they believed alternative options were still possible. (12)
In addition, 8,100 patients died as a result of doctors deliberately giving them overdoses of pain medication, not for the primary purpose of controlling pain, but to hasten the patient's death. (13) In 61% of these cases (4,941 patients), the intentional overdose was given without the patient's consent.(14)
According to the Remmelink Report, Dutch physicians deliberately and intentionally ended the lives of 11,840 people by lethal overdoses or injections--a figure which accounts for 9.1% of the annual overall death rate of 130,000 per year. The majority of all euthanasia deaths in Holland are involuntary deaths.
The Remmelink Report figures cited here do not include thousands of other cases, also reported in the study, in which life-sustaining treatment was withheld or withdrawn without the patient's consent and with the intention of causing the patient's death. (15) Nor do the figures include cases of involuntary euthanasia performed on disabled newborns, children with life-threatening conditions, or psychiatric patients. (16)
The most frequently cited reasons given for ending the lives of patients without their knowledge or consent were: "low quality of life," "no prospect for improvement," and "the family couldn't take it anymore."(17)
In 45% of cases involving hospitalized patients who were involuntarily euthanized, the patients' families had no knowledge that their loved ones' lives were deliberately terminated by doctors. (18)
According to the 1990 census, the population of Holland is approximately 15 million. That is only half the population of California. To get some idea of how the Remmelink Report statistics would apply to the U.S., those figures would have to be multiplied 16.6 times (based on the 1990 U.S. census population of approximately 250 million).
http://www.internationaltaskforce.org/fctholl.htm
Since Oregon legalized physician-assisted suicide, people have been dying left and right!
...or not.
Idiotic prohibition - as if the information in question is a profound mystery and a secret. What she sought was not so much disseminating the information [already well known and available], but to get publicity. And this would have been the easiest to deny her by not noticing her antics and not taking any action whatsoever.
What do we know about statistics in Oregon?
With a parent who has attempted suicide twice...and is now in a nursing home, this might not be a subject for me to comment on. Too close to home...
My doctor, here in America, offered me the option of knocking off my grandmother with morphine. My grandmother was walking, talking and yelling at everyone. Whenever she went to see the doctor she took a long list of (bogus) complaints with her.
"She's depressed," he said, "We can raise her morphine dosage level to make her completely comfortable. She will probably just slip away. It's up to you."
I took her to the psychiatrist and got her on Lithium (and off morphine). It worked for as long as she took the meds. She eventually stopped taking most of her drug cocktail. Then she decided one day not to take her heart meds and she died within two days.
Moral of the story: When Nana was really ready to go, she decided--by herself and with the help of God--not to take the meds that were extending her life unnaturally. No euthanasia was necessary.
Thanks for that, you know where I am and what I am going through. I hope for the same outcome. It's up to her.
btt
ping
You also obviously don't have a grasp on how many people considering assisted suicide are not mentally competent to make the decision. If you have a severe depression and call Dr. Kevorkian, you're not controlling your destiny, your depression is.
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