More than 100 people have died through South Australia’s Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) scheme in its first year, with that number predicted to rise significantly in the coming years as 120 more doctors become eligible to supervise patients registered for the program.
South Australia’s Minister for Health and Wellbeing Chris Picton said that it was an “important milestone” for the state. “VAD provides peace of mind to South Australians and their families and gives greater choice at the end of their life,” he added.
The state passed its VAD laws in June 2021 for Australian or permanent residents aged 18 or older with an incurable, progressive and advanced condition expected to cause death within six months, or one year for a neuro-degenerative condition, with suffering “that cannot be relieved in a manner the person considers tolerable.” The laws took effect in January last year.
The Catholic Weekly reports Adelaide’s Archbishop Patrick O’Regan at the time called for better resourcing for palliative care rather than the embracing of “state-sanctioned assisted suicide.” Every Australian state has voluntary dying laws in place and the territories are set to follow, beginning with the ACT which is set to introduce the most liberal VAD program in the country.
Archbishop Christopher Prowse of the Canberra-Goulburn Diocese recently told a public hearing into the proposed ACT laws: “It’s mistaken compassion to me that the health profession set up on the whole ethos of healing would directly involve itself in assisting a person with the poison of a medication that would cause their death. Notwithstanding their terminal illness and their fragility, to me palliative care is just a commonsense response to that.”
