Presently euthanasia is illegal in Australia. Euthanasia is the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma. Legalising Voluntary Euthanasia, the act of killing someone painlessly, especially to relieve suffering from an incurable illness, with their consent, should be regulated in Australia. It will become evident in this essay that the laws of euthanasia should be changed in favor of terminally ill patients. By changing the law it will allow terminally ill individuals to end their life with dignity and give them the choice of a compassionate and humane way to go about it.
Euthanasia is illegal in all states of Australia, but was briefly legal in the Northern Territory in 1995, only to be effectively nullified in 1997. Dr Philip Haig Nitschke is an Australian humanist, author and founder/ director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit international. Nitschke was the first doctor in the world to administer legal, voluntary euthanasia. Dr Philip Nitschke was able to assist four terminally ill patients to end their lives, before the law was overturned by the government of Australia. In current legalisation, s 284 Consent to death immaterial of The Criminal Code 1899, “Consent by a person to the causing of the person's
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Not only the patients will have a say about their own life, but unsafe suicide and euthanizing will be limited. The Program will monitor all euthanization and support all patients. However there could be penalties if the system is abused in the wrong way, such as preforming the procedure with a qualified doctor and only on the terminally ill with accordance to the strict criteria. In this essay it has drawn together some key issue dealing with law, practice and opinion relating to