AUSTRALIA / Queensland – How Voluntary Assisted Dying Acts with limited conditions cause severe suffering
24 May 2022
Guest article by Bryan McMahon, Queensland, Australia. March 2022
The wife of Australian Bryan McMahon ended her life through a lonely suicide. He explains why it happened and why it could and should have been very different.*
My wife Valerie McMahon ended her own life on 11th October 2020.
Valerie (“Val”) married me in 1963 after an 18-month courtship. We were both active participants in various sports, but eventually we settled down to an active farm life, me being in business and Val working our farm. Life was good and we both looked forward to our old age together and eventually being carried out in a box from our much-loved farm and lifestyle. Unfortunately, as with many things in life, this was not to be.
Val was born with defective eyesight and over the years despite the best of medical treatment she progressively lost sight. For someone so active, she willingly continued to modify her lifestyle to accommodate her ongoing reduced sight condition. Val became completely blind in her mid-seventies and blindness eventually became too difficult for her to bear.
It has been interesting for me to observe that many humans seem to consider that people who continue to suffer and fight serious health conditions are seen as heroes for putting up with poor and debilitating health conditions forever, until death overtakes them.
This is not seen to be the case when a person, who within their own timing, choose death, using a voluntary assisted dying (VAD) process. Many consider this to be a cowardly act, but this cannot be further from the truth.
As Val was no longer able to see, she asked me to assist her to research a VAD in Europe. We spent many days having coffee together, talking and reviewing the various options and reading personal stories of people choosing and intending to die this way. She eventually chose one of the Swiss options to end her life. One may think about my role in this with great difficulty, but I had watched my wife’s suffering for a long time and no matter how much I loved her and would [still] miss her I wanted her to do what she considered best for her. Val needed our support in making this final decision to die, I think you may call this unconditional love. We started to plan for this event. My son and I intended to travel to Switzerland to support Val with her decision and comfort her in her final moments of living. However, COVID got in the way, and this meant we were unable to leave Australia.
As time passed, Val told me she could not wait for our borders to open again. Because of our laws, Val had to carry out her suicide alone, by herself, while I was away. She tied a heavy crowbar to her ankles, tied her hands together and jumped into the deep end of our family pool. I cannot imagine her thoughts and loneliness at that time. I cannot think of a braver and more courageous act. A properly incorporated VAD into our laws would have allowed for a much more civilised, loving and caring time together and would have been much more helpful for all of us.
The law in Queensland Australia at that time did not allow for a VAD but the Government was in the process of considering and introducing a very limited type of VAD Act into our State.
VAD became law in late 2021. This still would not have assisted Val with her debilitating loss of sight and long-suffering mental condition. The Queensland VAD Act followed similar legislation introduced into a number of other Australian states. These Acts do not provide for persons to choose the timing of their deaths unless they are diagnosed to die from a non-recoverable illness within 12 months.
The VAD Act conditions were initially referred to the Queensland Law Commission to review and for the Commission to recommend a VAD process. Our government never considered a Swiss style VAD as this was specifically excluded by the government for consideration by the Commission. Regardless I offered up a comprehensive submission to the Commission. So much for real research in forming legislation in our State. Obviously, religious and other pressure groups prevented a type of Swiss VAD being implemented into our laws. I believe the introduction by the Queensland government of this Act with its very limited conditions demonstrates how fearful and spineless governments of all persuasions behave, when pressure groups become assertive.
Hopefully, by chipping away at this poor legislation, one day we may achieve a proper VAD Act throughout this world.
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* In this text, the guest author describes in detail the suicide method his wife used to end her suffering and life. In this particular context, DIGNITAS considers such description an essential part of the core message: if a person who, because of their suffering, makes a well-considered decision to end their life, but is denied access to a legal, safe and professionally accompanied method, they may choose a lonely suicide using drastic methods. This is risky both for the person (the method is not safe and failure may further aggravate the person’s situation) and problematic for those around him/her (friends and relatives cannot be with the person to the end, traumatisation of third persons).
