Posted on Saturday 14th October 2023 at 2:40am

I haven’t written for a while, but was prompted to do so by my friend and colleague Ian Wood. He pointed me to an email just sent about by Branka van der Linden of the anti-VAD “HOPE” blog site.

I've written about Ms van der Linden's musings before, including:

• 'HOPE' continues to pedal egregious misinformation
• Grotesque Catholic propaganda about Belgium
• 'Inhumane deaths': from unsubstantiated claim to full-on polemic
• Hiding their religious petticoats
• Anti-VAD suicide gaffes a major embarrassment

What’s the big deal?

In her email, Ms van der Linden wrote provocatively against the Netherlands’ voluntary assisted dying (VAD) law, citing a recently-published medical journal study of Dutch VAD cases that involved people with intellectual disabilities or autism spectrum disorder (or both). The study is a legitimate examination of cases published by the Dutch Euthanasia Commissions, and contains numerous observations and some qualifications.

Posted on Friday 18th March 2022 at 1:00am

I've written previously about bishops demonstrating their ignorance, as in the example of Catholic Bishop Tim Harris who presumed most or all of his flock opposes voluntary assisted dying (VAD), when in fact a significant majority support it. This time it's the Anglican Sydney diocese archbishop who's loudly flaunting his biases.

Sydney Anglican archbishop Kanishka Raffel (pictured on the diocese website above), has launched a program calling on NSW parliamentarians to reject a bill that, with a large number of safeguards, seeks to make VAD lawful in the state. NSW is the last state in the nation that still outlaws the practice.

Posted on Thursday 23rd May 2019 at 2:39am

Director of Palliative Care at Cabrini Health, Associate Professor Natasha Michael, yesterday published an opinion piece in The Age newspaper. In it, she rails against Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying (VAD) Act which comes into effect on 19^th June. Instead she articulates an arrogant and prescriptive view of what Australians should and shouldn’t be allowed, consistent with Catholic dogma, as I uncover.

Michael, along with fellow devout Catholic Dr Stephen Parnis, ‘tirelessly’ opposed the introduction of Victoria’s VAD law. They continue to actively oppose it, and her opinion piece reveals her spurious ‘reasoning’.

The Catholic Healthcare brick wall

More than half of all palliative care services in Australia are delivered through Catholic institutions, of which Cabrini Health is one arm. These institutions have determined that VAD will not be available in any of their facilities or via any of their services, even if the individual patient and doctor are supportive.

This arbitrarily limits access to lawful choice by citizens.

Posted on Wednesday 10th April 2019 at 8:39pm

HOPE’s Director, Branka van der Linden, is at it again, foisting more misleading information about voluntary assisted dying (VAD) on unwilling members of Parliament. I expose the rot and provide some background on Mrs van der Linden.

Van der Linden’s latest email to all WA MPs states:

Posted on Monday 1st April 2019 at 9:59pm

In my most recent article in the Journal of Assisted Dying, I forensically analyse Dutch ethicist Professor Theo Boer’s 2017 paper purporting to find suicide contagion from assisted dying in the Netherlands. It doesn’t go well for Professor Boer, to put it mildly. You can find the full article here.

I also find an astonishing coincidence that occurred in 2014, the year Boer went feral against the Dutch euthanasia law.

Multiple fatal flaws

Posted on Saturday 11th August 2018 at 11:33pm

In 1996 the Northern Territory Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (ROTI) came into effect. Just four people had used the Act when seven months later an Act of the Federal Parliament extinguished the NT law, by cancelling the Territories’ authority to enact it.

This week, the Senate [federal parliament] debates the Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted Suicide Legislation) Bill, sponsored by libertarian Senator David Leyonhjelm. If the Bill passes both houses, the Territories will again have the authority to legislate the matter of assisted dying.

Opponents of lawful assisted dying have been sharpening their knives to ensure that Senator Leyonhjelm’s Bill fails and that Territorians remain second-class citizens. In this post I expose one of the desperate and disgraceful pieces of misinformation opponents use to try and curry fear about law reform.

Opponent signals

There are signals from many quarters that assisted dying opponents are dragging out the tired old argument that indigenous Australians are too fearful of assisted dying to allow reinstatement of the Territories’ legislative authority.

The signals are clear, though so far mostly behind the scenes. Nevertheless, they predict a full onslaught of invalid “fear” claims in the parliamentary debate this week.

Posted on Tuesday 10th October 2017 at 7:58am

As the Parliament of Victoria prepares to debate an assisted dying Bill, South Australian Catholic anti-assisted-dying lobbyist Mr Paul Russell is at it again. This time he's sent a missive to Victorian politicians shouting about, amongst other things, a crisis of assisted dying numbers in Washington state. He’s conveniently cherry-picked his arguments again.

Mr Russell wrote that in Washington state:

“deaths from lethal drugs prescribed under the Act have nearly quadrupled (376%) from 51 in 2010 to 192 in 2016.”

Posted on Thursday 14th September 2017 at 10:20pm

It’s very disappointing that Catholic theologian Dr Joel Hodge’s recent editorial in Fairfax media about assisted dying law reform contained misinformation: the same old tired and discredited story trotted out as though it's true. Dr Hodge also repeated an old and curiously one-sided (Catholic) examination of the hypothetical slippery slope.

Unhappily, the kind of misinformation that Dr Hodge advances muddies the waters and cruelly stands in the way of legislative action, which most Australians want.

Posted on Sunday 6th August 2017 at 2:31am

In Monday’s Herald Sun, Victorian Archbishops Philip Freier and Denis Hart, and Bishops Ezekiel, Suriel, Lester Briebbenow, Bosco Puthur and Peter Stasiuk published a half-page advertisement admonishing the Victorian government for its initiative to legalise assisted dying for the terminally ill, an ad similar to the one published by religious figures in 2008.

I have no quarrel with individuals of faith regarding their own private beliefs. However, the bishops’ attempt at public “leadership” through the advertisement is deserving of redress for its multiple fallacies.

The ‘abandonment’ fallacy

Posted on Saturday 11th February 2017 at 1:02am

In response to my previous post about the religious basis of organised opposition to assisted dying, Dr Katherine Pettus, Advocacy and Human Rights Officer at the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC), tweeted:

 “#Catholic church @Pontifex believes all life is sacred&supports #PalliativeCare and use of strong #pain medicines” — Dr Katherine Pettus

Posted on Thursday 9th February 2017 at 9:53pm

You only have to look to understand who is campaigning against your right to choose an assisted death in the face of intolerable and unrelievable suffering.

A case in point is a massive advertisement published in both of Melbourne’s daily newspapers: News Corp’s The Herald Sun (right-wing) and Fairfax Media’s The Age (left-wing). The ad was published in 2008 when Victorian MLC Colleen Hartland introduced the Medical Treatment (Physician Assisted Dying) Bill into the State legislature.

Posted on Tuesday 19th April 2016 at 2:00am

The Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Mr Lyle Shelton, is at it again.

Yesterday, he tweeted ABC's Q&A program as thousands of people do while it is on air. His tweet was broadcast live to air as shown above. What did he say as panelists were discussing assisted dying law reform?

"Sadly voluntary euthanasia quickly became involuntary euthanasia in Holland. #qanda" LyleShelton

Mr Shelton's claim is bunkum.

Posted on Sunday 15th November 2015 at 2:38am

In a recent opinion piece in the ABC’s Religion and Ethics section, Bernadette Tobin¹ rails against assisted dying, commencing with the criticism that the ABC’s Q&A discussion on the subject this week “lacked precision.” But Tobin’s opinion piece itself commits exactly this offence, as I explain.

For the sake of brevity I’ll only quickly mention that Tobin’s piece also fails on the score of accuracy. For example, she wrongly asserts that “euthanasia” means a doctor administering lethal medication to a patient. It doesn’t. “Euthanasia” simply means “good death”: nothing more and nothing less, regardless of how it occurs. Tobin also asserts that voluntary euthanasia in lawful jurisdictions has caused non-voluntary euthanasia to develop.

Posted on Thursday 17th September 2015 at 6:06am

On 16^th September 2015, the Victorian Director of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), Dan Flynn, appeared as a witness to the Victorian Parliament’s end of life choices inquiry being conducted by the Legal and Social Issues Committee. He made a number of mistaken statements, but what was most worrisome was the revelation of the ACL’s real agenda: to wind back patient rights more than a quarter century.

• Out of touch
• Out of date
• Wrong about United Nations
• Wrong about Belgium’s law and practice
• Confused about advance care directives

Posted on Sunday 14th June 2015 at 4:28pm

In today’s Fairfax press, Sydney woman Mary Ticinovic advances a number of reasons as to why she believes that assisted dying is not merciful. The by-line identifies her as a “clinical psychologist”. But her arguments are not founded on the basic tenets of psychology. How so?

Read Mary’s opinion piece in The Age

All life is precious

Posted on Sunday 14th June 2015 at 4:13pm

On the 25th January 2012, the Council of Europe passed declaration 1859 on advance care planning. Immediately, lobbyists opposed to assisted dying loudly proclaimed that the resolution banned euthanasia across Europe, when it did nothing of the sort. What actually happened?