The Archdiocese of Sydney has launched a hard-hitting social media campaign against assisted suicide as it becomes legal in Victoria this month.
The video message was released on Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP’s personal Facebook page on 3 June. It is the first in a series to issue stark warnings about what happens to vulnerable people in countries that legalise euthanasia and assisted killing.
It focuses on a Belgium study which showed that one person was euthanised every three days without their explicit consent and more than half of those euthanised had never discussed a desire to have their life ended.
Archbishop Fisher told a Washington pro-life conference in January that legalised euthanasia always led to more deaths than originally envisaged.
“Bracket creep is built into the very logic of euthanasia. Once we start deciding death is in the best interests of some people, then of course there’ll be others in the line”, Archbishop Fisher said.
“That’s exactly what’s happened in Holland and Belgium. The Dutch introduced voluntary euthanasia for adults in the 1980s and 1990s, but by the 2000s, it allowed non-voluntary euthanasia for newborns. What was supposed to be the extreme cases of unrelievable suffering is now the standard way of dying for 5000 people in the Netherlands every year.”
Euthanasia and assisted suicide laws commence in Victoria on 19 June, while Queensland and Western Australia are each facing the most concerted push to date to enact similar legislation
Last week the outgoing head of the WA Australian Medical Association Dr Omar Khorshid questioned claims of high public support for an assisted suicide bill in the state. He said most people are in the dark about what is being proposed in the legislation which is expected to be introduced in August.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” said Dr Khorshid. “The idea that 90 per cent of the public are completely behind euthanasia is a fallacy because the public don’t actually know what it means.”
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