At least there are some issues where Australia and the Howard Government do not slavishly follow the United States.
In the US this past week, yet another heavily armed civilian went on a random-shooting spree killing many innocent bystanders – depriving them of their right to life.
The US Congress has done virtually nothing in the past two decades to prevent these killings. It passed some minor restrictions on guns after President Ronald Reagan was shot an injured in 1981.
Yet this same week Congress was specially recalled in a weekend sitting and passed special legislation which was signed immediately into law by President George W Bush. The legislation was aimed at forcibly keeping alive Terri Schiavo, who lies in a vegetative state in a hospital in Florida.
The Bush Administration and other religious extremists in the US show bizarre contradictions about the right to life. They spend all their efforts on the unborn and nearly dead, while other policies are an affront to the lives of the healthy living.
More than 1500 US servicemen and thousands of others have been killed in Iraq – a war prosecuted prematurely and without UN sanction. If the preservation of life were your belief, surely you would exhaust all other options before committing to war.
More than one person a week is executed in the US – nearly half in George Bush’s state of Texas. Some are innocent. The vast majority are guilty of terrible crimes, but if the preservation of life is your belief, why not find some other punishment?
More than 30,000 people a year die by firearms in the US. About 12,000 are homicides; 1000 accidents; and 17,000 suicides.
How much life could be saved with better gun control?
Australia has about 500 firearms deaths – less than one fifth of the US rate. Prime Minister John Howard responded to the Port Arthur shooting. The Bush Administration has done nothing in response to the half dozen shooting massacres on its watch.
Howard has sensibly refused to buy in on the abortion debate. True, he allowed others to take the running on euthanasia to overturn Northern Territory’s euthanasia law, but it is unlikely there would have been intervention if it had been a state law. Also, there has been no federal intervention, or even comment on several cases in state courts recently which mirror the Terri Schiavo case.
Those cases show a much clearer position in Australia. A 15-year battle such that that between Terri Schiavo’s husband on one hand and her parents and siblings, on the other, would either not be possible, or would have been over long ago.
Typically, Australian state and territory jurisdictions have Guardianship Acts which provide for next of kin being granted guardianship of people in no condition to look after their own affairs. The spouse usually gets appointed.
A good example (Re BWV) came up two years ago in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal which deals with guardianship. The subject was a 68 year-old woman with Pick’s disease — a form of dementia. She was “unable to communicate, move or take any food or liquid by mouth. She has no cognitive capacity at all and there is no prospect for improvement or recovery whatsoever.”
As in the Schiavo case, the husband wanted to withdraw the feeding tube. The Right to Life Association intervened, arguing against this.
The law in most jurisdictions in Australia says that a person can refuse to accept medical treatment. But medical treatment does not include palliative care which includes “the provision of reasonable medical procedures for the relief of pain, suffering and discomfort” or “the reasonable provision of food and water”.
The tribunal held that insertion of a feeding tube or the continuation of a feeding tube is a medical procedure – not the palliative provision of food and water. Surgery was required to insert it and “various measures have been employed to maintain it, and the substances provided through it, including medication, require ongoing medical supervision. In our view when whole regime is considered, as it must be, it is to be regarded as medical treatment. . . . The provision of food and water cannot be said to be reasonable when it is provided to a person who is dying, not for the primary purpose of palliation, but with the aim of deferring or suspending the process of dying.”
The tribunal granted a guardianship order (in this case to the Public Advocate, but could have been to the husband) so the treatment could end.
The tribunal said, “The question is never whether the patient’s life is worthwhile but whether the TREATMENT is worthwhile.”
So the law in Australia generally permits the end of treatment the result of which will likely be death, but it does not permit active treatment with the aim that it will certainly kill someone. Withdrawal of treatment happens very often – not only with the removal of feeding tubes, but also with the withdrawal of anti-biotics so the patient dies of pneumonia. It also happens that pain relief drugs are given with the aim of relieving pain, but which may hasten death. This is within the law in most Australian jurisdictions.
In short, the treatment – the painful, unnecessary prolonging of life — is not in the best interests of the patient.
Others (a majority according to opinion polls) would go further and say that withdrawal of treatment – with the result of death from pneumonia, starvation or thirst – is not as desirable for patients and families than a painless pill which causes death.
In any event, it seems a tad inconsistent and hypocritical to fight tooth an nail to keep someone in a vegetative state alive on some religious principle while pursuing war and executions and doing nothing to stop shooting deaths.