📋 Find your MLA

The Bill Being Debated

Right now, in Darwin, the Northern Territory Parliament is debating a bill that would make the Northern Territory the last jurisdiction in Australia to legalise assisted dying. It’s expected to pass this week on a conscience vote.

But here’s what should worry you: the “safeguards” being built into this bill are already being targeted for removal, before it’s even law.

Strip away the acronyms and here’s what the Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill actually does:

• It legalises assisted dying in the NT for the first time since it was overturned by Canberra in 1997.

• It limits eligibility to people with a prognosis of 12 months or less to live.

• The patient can ask their doctor about assisted dying as an option at any time; a doctor cannot be the one to raise it first.

That third point is the one being fought over hardest this week. In the media, it’s almost always called a “gag clause.” As usual, language is being used to imply something quite different from what’s actually happening — and how often are we seeing that play out in Australia lately?

What a “Gag Clause” Really Is

“Gag” implies censorship — someone being silenced against his will. That’s not what this provision does. The patient can ask his doctor about assisted dying as an option at any time, and the doctor can answer honestly. What the clause does is keep the doctor from being the one to introduce death as a treatment option to a patient who hasn’t asked for it.

We need to call it what it is: a safeguard against a serious power imbalance.

A dying patient is frightened, exhausted, often in pain, and trained to trust his doctor’s judgement above almost anyone else’s.

If a doctor can raise assisted suicide unprompted, that judgement carries enormous weight — even when it isn’t meant as pressure, a patient can hear “have you thought about ending things” from their doctor as something close to a recommendation. The clause exists to make sure the idea comes from the patient, not from the person holding authority over his care.

Calling it a “gag” reframes a protection for patients as a restriction on doctors. That’s the language fight to watch, and it’s exactly the provision now being targeted for removal.

Sources: none additional — this section builds on the framing established above.

The Push to Widen It Already

Andrew Denton, founder of the advocacy group Go Gentle Australia, has publicly welcomed this bill. But in the same breath, he and others — including the NT branch of the Australian Medical Association and the Labor opposition — are already pushing to strip out the very safeguards it contains: both the 12-month prognosis limit and the rule stopping doctors from raising assisted dying unprompted.

Think about what that means. The bill hasn’t even been passed yet, and the people who campaigned for this law are already campaigning to widen it. That’s not a slippery slope hypothetical, it’s happening in the same parliamentary sitting.

If the prognosis limit goes, who is “terminal” becomes far less clear. If doctors can raise assisted suicide unprompted, a sick, frightened, or depressed patient could hear it offered to him before they’ve asked, from the person he trusts most for medical guidance.

If you live in the Northern Territory and disagree with this bill, or you’re worried about how quickly its safeguards are being targeted, contact your local MLA this week, before the vote.

How to do it:

1. Find your electorate and MLA at the NT Legislative Assembly website (nt.gov.au / parliament.nt.gov.au).

2. Email them directly — a short, personal message matters more than a form letter.

3. Ask them to vote against the bill, or at minimum to reject amendments that remove the 12-month prognosis rule and the doctor gag clause.

📩 Download the letter template

📋 Find your MLA

Sources:

• ABC News — Voluntary assisted dying to become legal in the NT, as bill secures majority support

• ABC News — MLAs brace for debate as CLP backbenchers flood NT government with voluntary assisted dying amendments

• Wikipedia — Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995

• ABC News — NT politician proposes amendments to own party’s VAD bill ahead of parliament vote

• Neos Kosmos — Assisted dying clause gagging doctors set to be debated

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

On August 11, independent MP Kate Chaney forced a vote in the House of Representatives to strip out the federal ban on doctors discussing euthanasia over phone or video. Labor and the Coalition combined to vote it down, 74 to 12, a near-total result, not a party-line one. Health Minister Mark Butler told parliament the current telehealth setup has been “quite mixed,” and he isn’t convinced it’s appropriate for something this serious.

Four days later, a national poll of roughly 1,400 GPs landed. Only 8 percent think a video call is acceptable for this. 69 percent are against it outright, no conditions. The remaining 23 percent would only consider it in narrow situations. Add those together and nearly 9 in 10 GPs won’t simply wave this through.

Read what they wrote and it isn’t abstract. A screen can’t show who else is in the room. One doctor cited a case where the medication itself was diverted and used by someone else. Another line summed it up: “far too serious an issue for routine telehealth.”

Who We Should Actually Be Listening To

The loudest voices for telehealth aren’t the people who’d be doing the assessing, they’re politicians and advocacy groups whose stated mission is expanding access. That’s not neutral, it’s built into what they do.

GPs aren’t neutral either, but their stake is a different one entirely. Their job, their training, their entire professional purpose, is to keep people alive and well. Asking them to assess whether someone should be helped to die isn’t a small addition to that role, it’s a direct conflict with it. That’s exactly why so many are hesitant: they’re the ones who’d have to carry that responsibility, not just debate it from a podium. They are reluctant and as mentioned above we can see why.

The fight didn’t end with the vote, it changed rooms. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has introduced her own bill in the Senate, and Northern Territory parliament sits August 25 to 27, with its own euthanasia bill due for a vote in that window, which would make the NT the last jurisdiction to legalise it.

The Real Fix

The AMA, the same body cited as proof doctors want telehealth VAD, has said just as clearly that “investment in VAD must never compromise the appropriate provision and resourcing of palliative care.” So where is that funding?

Parliament found the numbers to block a telehealth bill in an afternoon, 74 to 12. In June, the federal government quietly cut funding to a program that put palliative care nurses into aged care homes. Tasmania’s own Health Minister called it “extremely disappointing.” No emergency debate saved that program. It just went.

When it comes to stopping the expansion of assisted dying, this parliament can move fast. When it comes to funding proper care for people who still want to live, it can’t find the same urgency.

The Senate bill hasn’t had its vote yet, and the NT decision lands within the next week. If you think the answer is funding real care, not faster access to ending it, tell your Senator that now.

Sources

• Healthed — “Few GPs actually support telehealth assessment for voluntary assisted dying”

• Medical Republic — “Few GPs actually support telehealth assessment for voluntary assisted dying”

• The Conversation — “View from The Hill: government shuts down telehealth-for-VAD bill, defying Labor conference”

• Croakey Health Media — “On voluntary assisted dying, ‘it is time to fix what is a fundamentally unfair, unjust and cruel law’”

• ABC News — “Dying woman’s last-minute plea to prime minister to allow telehealth for voluntary assisted dying”

• Australian Medical Association — “Attorney-General must act on telehealth and voluntary assisted dying”

• Australian Medical Association — “Updated Position Statement on Voluntary Assisted Dying”

• Australian Medical Association — “AMA position statement on Voluntary Assisted Dying 2025”

• Greens (Sarah Hanson-Young media release) — “Greens introduce bill to expand voluntary assisted dying access through Telehealth”

• NT Legislative Assembly — “2026 Meeting Dates”

• Premier of Tasmania — “Federal health cuts to impact palliative aged care support”

• Go Gentle Australia — “Govt shuts down telehealth-for-VAD-bill, defying Labor conference”

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

The Canberra Times piece “Simple fix: doctors plead to modernise assisted dying” (9 August 2026) illustrates a problem within the euthanasia debate itself: the erosion of balance in reporting on contested moral and medical questions. Structurally, the article is not a news report so much as an advocacy brief, and it is worth examining why.

The piece is built entirely around an Adelaide haematologist who has helped patients voluntarily end their lives and who wants telehealth restrictions on assisted dying communications lifted. It then quotes the chief executive of euthanasia advocacy group Go Gentle, who argues that relying on federal legislators to update the law is itself the problem. The article then notes that a Greens senator has pledged to introduce a bill to strike down the relevant prohibition, and that another independent MP may revive a similar proposal.

Every named voice in the article — the doctor, the advocacy CEO, the politicians mentioned — is aligned on the same side of the same policy outcome. There is no palliative care physician raising concerns about safeguards, no disability advocate, no bioethicist, no member of the public, and no politician opposed to loosening the telehealth restrictions given a single line to explain why the law might exist in the first place or why Parliament has been cautious about it.

This matters because the article treats a genuinely contested question — should the criminal law restricting online and telehealth communication about assisted dying be relaxed — as though it were a settled issue requiring a mere administrative “fix.”

Calling a change to euthanasia laws a “simple fix” is not a neutral description; it is the advocates’ rhetorical framing, presented by the newspaper as settled fact. A reader is given no sense that these communications restrictions might exist for considered reasons: such as guarding against coercion, ensuring adequate in-person assessment of vulnerable or isolated patients, or preventing assisted-dying prescriptions from being requested or issued without robust verification of identity, capacity, and consent. Those are exactly the kinds of concerns raised by disability advocates, some Indigenous health bodies, and palliative care specialists in the broader assisted-dying debate. None of whom appear here.

To have only one side represented in a debate is bad for our nation. And the death of journalism. Journalism’s basic obligation, especially on matters of life and death, is to represent the genuine range of informed opinion so the public can weigh the issue for itself. A piece that quotes only advocates for a single reform, uses their language uncritically in its headline and body, and omits any countervailing medical, ethical, or political perspective does not meet that standard. It functions as a press release for a campaign, laundered through a wire service (AAP) and republished without added scrutiny or a right of reply for anyone opposed. Readers deserve to know when they are reading advocacy rather than reporting. And to know when the deeper issues are being decided for them.

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

📋 Find your MLA

The Bill Returns to NT Parliament

The Northern Territory is about to become the last jurisdiction in Australia to re-legalise euthanasia. It was actually the first, passing the country’s original assisted dying law in 1995, before federal parliament tore it up two years later. Now, three decades on, it’s closing the gap with the rest of the country. The government says it already has the numbers, before a single word of debate has happened, and the vote is now just weeks away, set down for the sitting week of August 25 to 27.

The Rights of the Terminally Ill bill was introduced to NT parliament on the 23rd of July and comes back for debate and a vote in the August 25 to 27 sitting week. A majority of the government’s 17 MLAs are expected to support it, enough for the bill to pass regardless of how the opposition or crossbench vote.

This new bill limits eligibility to people with twelve months or less to live, and it stops doctors from raising assisted dying with a patient unless the patient brings it up first. Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby says the goal is laws that are “patient-led.”

Even Supporters Say It Falls Short

Here’s the part worth paying attention to. The Territory’s own parliamentary inquiry recommended against both of those provisions, no time limit, and no restriction on doctors raising the topic. The government kept them anyway.

Council on the Ageing NT chief executive Sue Shearer said she’s pleased the bill is set to pass, but she’d have preferred it without the gag clause or the time limit. She also raised something worth noting: she says the Chief Minister has already promised a review of the laws down the track.

If that’s accurate, it’s not a hypothetical concern. That’s the government signalling, before the bill has even passed, that it expects to revisit these restrictions.

Go Gentle Australia, the country’s biggest pro-euthanasia lobby group, is already calling these provisions “retrograde steps against expert advice.” They’ve compared the gag clause to a doctor telling a cancer patient about taking pills while staying silent on the option for surgery. That comparison doesn’t really hold up.

Surgery treats the underlying disease. VAD doesn’t treat anything, it ends the patient instead of the illness. And the clause doesn’t withhold information the way the comparison implies: once a patient raises VAD themselves, doctors can discuss it freely. What’s restricted is who can raise it first, not what a patient is allowed to know. Marshall Perron, who wrote the original 1995 law, has also raised concerns about the bill’s restrictions.

This isn’t just coming from outside parliament, either. Independent MLA Yingiya Guyula said the drafting instructions behind this bill didn’t go far enough to protect First Nations people. He hadn’t committed to a vote when the bill was introduced, and said he wanted to see the final text first.

That’s a sitting member of parliament, not an advocacy group, saying the protections for First Nations Territorians in this bill may not be adequate.

The bill does include some Aboriginal-specific measures: mandated Aboriginal representation on the review board, eligibility for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Practitioners to act as administering practitioners, and provisions requiring respect for Aboriginal end-of-life beliefs. Whether that goes far enough is exactly what Guyula says he’s still weighing up.

Where This Is Likely Headed

Put those two things together: the government reportedly already planning a review, and a First Nations MLA saying protections don’t go far enough, and you get a clear picture. This bill isn’t a settled, final answer. It’s a starting point that almost everyone involved expects to shift, and history says it shifts in one direction.

Canada’s law for the terminally ill expanded within a few years to include people who weren’t dying at all. Belgium’s eligible age has been extended down to children. The pattern doesn’t skip Australia.

What isn’t getting airtime here is the state of palliative care in the Territory. The NT has some of the most remote, underserved communities in the country. For a lot of Territorians, especially in First Nations communities, proper end-of-life care isn’t a genuine option they’re choosing between. It’s not there at all.

A choice isn’t really a choice when the alternative doesn’t exist.

If you’re in the NT, this is the moment to make your voice heard, before the vote on August 25 to 27. We’ve put together a letter template you can send straight to your local MLA, opposing this legislation and calling for real investment in palliative care instead. Find your MLA’s contact details at parliament.nt.gov.au, download the template from the link below, personalise it, and send it today. A short, respectful letter from a constituent carries real weight before a conscience vote like this one.

📩 Download the letter template

📋 Find your MLA

Sources:

• ABC News, “Voluntary assisted dying to become legal in the NT, as bill secures majority support,” Jack Hislop, 22 July 2026

• NT Independent, “CLP to introduce voluntary assisted dying legislation Thursday, pledge to pass it next month,” 23 July 2026

• Go Gentle Australia, “NT VAD Bill 30 years in the waiting”

• Medical Republic, “VAD returns to NT”

• NT Legislative Assembly, 2026 Meeting Dates

• NT Parliment, Contact details for members

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

Labor just voted to let a dying person’s last conversation with their doctor happen over a phone call. Even the Prime Minister says that’s not safe. So why did his own party vote for it anyway?

On Friday, delegates passed an amendment committing federal Labor to remove the Commonwealth ban on using telehealth for euthanasia consultations, in what The Conversation’s Michelle Grattan reported was the only contested vote of the entire three-day conference.

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland then moved a second motion guaranteeing Labor MPs a conscience vote rather than a binding party position. Even the conscience of the Prime minister is troubled on this issue. And he is not alone.

The Attorney-General herself told the conference floor she was “personally not convinced” that someone facing an end-of-life decision shouldn’t get a proper face-to-face consultation. NSW MP Sally Quinnell went further, telling delegates these are “literally life and death conversations” that shouldn’t happen over a screen. Even senior Labor figures aren’t sold on this being a fix.

Who Is Ryan Batchelor?

The man who did move it is Victorian MP Ryan Batchelor. Standing at the microphone in Adelaide, he told the conference: “It’s inequitable. It’s distressing, and it must change.” Mr Batchelor isn’t a newcomer to Labor politics. And his family’s connection to this issue runs deeper than his advocacy would suggest. His father’s partner of 35 years, Dorothy Reading, was a board member and strategist at Dying with Dignity Victoria, one of the organisations that campaigned for Victoria’s original assisted dying laws. As Mr Batchelor told state parliament in 2024, she died just a week before those laws came into effect in 2019.

The law he wants gone dates to 2005, a Criminal Code provision written to stop cyberbullying-related suicide, well before any state had legalised euthanaisa. In 2023, the Federal Court confirmed in Carr v Attorney-General that the provision does cover euthanasia, closing a legal grey area doctors had been quietly operating in. That ruling is what’s driven three years of pressure to change it.

Mr Batchelor tells a story of personal tragedy. But that story fails to acknowledge the problems caused by his proposal. A federation like Australia, with no laws preventing suicide by telehealth, means we open ourselves up to the unthinkable. Call centres in Sydney or Melbourne dispensing euthanisia to Kiwirrkurra, Birdsville, Oodnadatta. No visit. No personal contact. No real support.

The Data Behind the Rural Equity Claim

His central argument is that rural and remote patients are being locked out of euthanasia. The numbers don’t support that. Victoria’s own VAD Review Board reports regional and rural applicants made up 36 per cent of all applicants last year, close to their actual share of the state’s population. In South Australia, 88 per cent of regional patients are already being supported by a doctor based in their own region, up from 81 per cent the year before, with no telehealth change involved at all.

Euthanasia is already reaching regional families roughly in line with where they live, without a single phone consultation. What isn’t reaching them at the same rate is palliative care. Even inside the same debate that produced Victoria’s 2025 reforms, MPs raised concerns that palliative care funding has been falling behind while euthanasia access keeps expanding.

The same Victorian Board recorded 171 people last year who died before their euthanasia permit process was finished. That’s not evidence the process needs to move faster, it’s evidence of how many terminally ill Victorians are approaching the end of their life without adequate palliative support, which is where the real gap sits, and where the funding and reform effort should be going.

To be clear, this isn’t a story about finding the right delivery method for something we think is fine. The problem isn’t only how euthanasia is accessed, it’s how far euthanasia keeps expanding once a law is on the books.

In the same 2025 bill that removed Victoria’s gag clause, the required years of specialist experience dropped from five to one, the prognosis window stretched from six months to twelve, and the wait between requests shrank from nine days to five. Telehealth is just the next item on a list that keeps getting longer. And Australia isn’t the first country to watch that happen. Canada legalised assisted dying in 2016 for people who were already dying. By 2021, it had expanded to people whose death wasn’t reasonably foreseeable at all.

Eligibility for people whose only condition is mental illness was due to open up next, before a parliamentary committee this year recommended it be indefinitely paused, after warnings the medical system wasn’t ready. That’s the trajectory. Every step looks small and compassionate on its own. The direction never runs the other way.

Even the Prime Minister isn’t comfortable with where this is heading, at least not yet. But that view may not matter much longer. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young and independent MP Kate Chaney have both said they’ll force a parliamentary vote when Parliament resumes in August, regardless of what the Cabinet decides. This isn’t settled, and it’s moving fast.

If you think Australians deserve real investment in palliative care and genuine safeguards, not another barrier quietly removed at a party conference, follow this channel so you don’t miss what happens in August. Tell us in the comments what you think Parliament should do. And if this matters to you, contact your local federal MP or Senator directly, and tell them where you stand before this comes to a vote.

Sources

• The Conversation — Labor national conference backs use of telehealth in voluntary assisted dying care

• Canberra Times (AAP) — Labor backs telehealth for voluntary assisted dying

• Newcastle Herald (AAP) — Labor backs telehealth for voluntary assisted dying

• Wikipedia — Ryan Batchelor

• Rationalist Society (Substack) — Telehealth: The next fight for assisted dying advocates

• AusDoc — Federal Court rules VAD telehealth consults ‘an incitement to suicide’

• Australian Medical Association — AMA further urging AG to act on telehealth and VAD

• Go Gentle Australia — Victoria makes VAD fairer and more accessible

• Parliament of Victoria Hansard — Voluntary Assisted Dying Amendment Bill 2025 — 12 November

• Victorian Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board — Annual Report, July 2023 – June 2024

• SA Health — Strategic Plan 2025-2027 (Voluntary Assisted Dying Board Review Annual Report 2024-25)

• APO (hosting Victorian VAD Review Board) — Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board Annual Report July 2024 to June 2025

• Daily Advertiser (AAP) — Crossbench to force Labor hand on telehealth euthanasia

• Go Gentle Australia — Vale Dorothy Reading

• Parliament of Australia — Criminal Code Amendment (Suicide Related Material Offences) Bill 2005

• Federal Register of Legislation — Criminal Code Amendment (Suicide Related Material Offences) Act 2005

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

What Was Decided in Adelaide

Delegates at the ALP national conference in Adelaide voted on Friday, July 24, to commit federal Labor to removing legal barriers that prevent telehealth from being used to discuss euthanasia between doctors and patients, according to reporting by The Conversation and other outlets covering the conference. The amendment, moved by Victorian MP Ryan Batchelor, calls for the repeal of a long-standing provision in the Commonwealth Criminal Code that effectively criminalises doctors approving euthanasia for their patients over the phone or online. Batchelor told delegates the existing law was “inequitable” and created unnecessary delays, arguing it undermines state-based assisted dying schemes and disproportionately disadvantages patients in rural and remote areas who would otherwise need to travel long distances for in-person consultations. However, these claims do no hold up under scrutiny.

The amendment passed on a voice vote — notable, according to the Australian Associated Press, because it was the only item debated on the floor of the conference, with every other proposal adopted without opposition. Following its passage, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland moved a further motion, seconded by Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, amending the party’s national constitution so that voluntary assisted dying can be freely debated at state or federal Labor forums without any resulting resolution binding individual MPs. That change effectively formalises a conscience vote on the issue — only the second matter, after abortion, to be given that status within the party’s platform.

Dissent Inside the Party

The proposal was not adopted without resistance. NSW MP Sally Quinnell spoke against the amendment, telling the conference that end-of-life conversations demand compassion and careful listening that she argued telehealth cannot provide. She described the discussions as “life and death conversations” that are “complex, nuanced” and should not occur over a video call, insisting they require in-person empathy and human interaction.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also voiced personal opposition to the telehealth approach, despite supporting the broader right to access euthanasia. Speaking after the conference, he compared the situation to emergency cardiac care, arguing that just as a heart attack cannot be managed remotely, end-of-life discussions warrant face-to-face medical attention. Rowland struck a similar note in her remarks, stating she was not personally convinced that a person facing an end-of-life decision should be denied a face-to-face consultation, and suggesting that a state’s failure to properly resource its scheme was not, in her view, sufficient justification for shifting to remote consultations. Under the new platform position, it will fall to the federal parliamentary Labor caucus and cabinet to determine if and when any legislative change is pursued.

The Legal Origins of the Dispute

The barrier at the centre of the debate traces back to the Criminal Code Amendment (Suicide Related Material Offences) Act 2005, which inserted sections 474.29A and 474.29B into the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995. Those provisions, according to the Bill’s explanatory memorandum, were designed to criminalise the use of - carriage service- telephone, internet or similar communication- to counsel, incite or provide instructions on suicide. The law’s aim is to protect vulnerable people from bullying and coercion into suicide. It included an explicit carve-out protecting public debate and advocacy for law reform on euthanasia.

The provisions took on new significance after most Australian states subsequently legalised euthanasia. In November 2023, the Federal Court ruled in Carr v Attorney-General (Cth) that the term suicide within the Criminal Code extends to a death carried out lawfully under Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017, meaning doctors risk criminal liability if they discuss VAD-related information with patients by phone, email or other electronic means, even where the underlying act is legal under state law. The Law Council of Australia has noted this ruling means practitioners face potential prosecution for conduct otherwise sanctioned by their own state’s legislation, prompting state health departments, including Victoria’s, to instruct clinicians that assisted suicide consultations should occur face to face.

The current standoff sits atop a longer legislative history. The Northern Territory became the first jurisdiction in the world to legalise euthanasia with the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995, which took effect in 1996 — but the Commonwealth Parliament overturned it the following year through the Euthanasia Laws Act 1997, commonly known as the Andrews Bill, which stripped the territories of the power to legislate on the issue. It took roughly two decades before the states began legislating individually, beginning with Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017, which came into effect in 2019 and made it the first Australian state to permit the practice, according to reporting on the Adelaide conference. Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia have since followed. The Northern Territory, whose territorial rights on the matter have since been restored by federal legislation, is expected to hold its own vote on legalising assisted suicide in August.

What Happens Next

The platform change does not itself alter federal law; any repeal of the Criminal Code provisions would require legislation to pass through both houses of Parliament. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has said she intends to introduce a private member's bill addressing the telehealth restrictions in August and has urged the Prime Minister not to allow his personal views to delay the change, arguing telehealth is often the only practical means by which people in regional and remote areas can access essential health advice. Whether the government brings forward its own legislation, allows a crossbench bill to proceed, or leaves the matter unresolved will now depend on decisions by the federal cabinet and parliamentary Labor Party, which retain sole authority under the new platform to determine the timing and shape of any reform.

Batchelor’s Statistics Point the Wrong Way

When Ryan Batchelor told Labor’s national conference that rural and remote Australians are “disadvantaged” by federal restrictions on telehealth euthanasia consultations, he diagnosed the wrong illness entirely. The genuine, well-documented disadvantage facing rural Australians at the end of life is not a shortage of ways to die — it is a catastrophic shortage of care to help them live well until they die naturally.

Palliative Care Australia has stated that only 16% of the specialist palliative medicine workforce lives and works in rural and regional areas, despite roughly 30% of Australians living outside major cities. The organisation’s own 2026 federal budget submission notes that more than three in five dying Australians never receive specialist palliative care at any stage of their illness. Rural patients, according to health researchers, are routinely forced to travel hundreds of kilometres simply to access basic symptom relief, leaving many to endure unrelieved pain, breathlessness, and psychological distress in their final weeks — a burden their families then carry for years afterward.

Set against this backdrop, Batchelor’s argument inverts the priorities a compassionate society should hold. He treats the inconvenience of arranging an in-person consultation for a lethal process as the pressing equity issue, while the state’s near-total failure to deliver adjustable pain relief, nursing support, and hospice beds to the same communities goes comparatively unmentioned. If a rural Australian cannot get a specialist palliative care nurse to visit them at home, the answer is not to make it easier to end their life over a video call — it is to fund the nurse.

There is also a darker structural logic worth naming plainly. Expanding telehealth access to euthanasia while palliative infrastructure in the bush remains skeletal does not equalise choice; it manufactures a false choice. A patient who cannot access adequate pain management, respite care, or psychological support, but who can access assisted dying at the tap of a phone screen, is not choosing freely between two equally available options. They are being offered the cheaper, easier path precisely because the harder, more resource-intensive path — genuine care — was never built for them. Removing the “friction” of a face-to-face consultation, as Batchelor frames it, does nothing to address why that friction exists in the first place: because doctors, quite rightly, are cautious about irreversible decisions made without a properly resourced support system behind them.

A rural patient deserves the same palliative workforce, the same hospice access, and the same quality of end-of-life care as a patient in Sydney or Melbourne. Until that parity exists, arguing that the priority is faster access to death, rather than equal access to care, gets the moral order of the crisis exactly backward.

• Sources:
  The Conversation — "Labor national conference backs use of telehealth in voluntary assisted dying care"

• The Canberra Times (AAP) — "Crossbench to force Labor hand on telehealth euthanasia"

• Sue Barrett — "Federal Labor set its platform for the next election"

• Barry Nilsson — "Court confirms that it's an offence to provide voluntary assisted dying services by telemedicine"

• The Conversation — "The ban on telehealth in voluntary assisted dying doesn't stack up"

• Parliamentary Education Office — "Euthanasia Laws Act 1997"

• Medical Republic — "NT to come full circle on VAD"

• Palliative Care Australia — "Palliative Medicine Institute needed to address care gaps for rural communities"

• Palliative Care Australia — "2026 Federal Budget Submission"

  ---

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

The Win: A New Right to Care

Let’s start with the win. For the first time, Australians getting government funded aged care have a legal right to proper end of life care. Palliative Care Australia says this finally treats effective end of life care as a normal part of aged care, not as an extra. Anyone who has watched someone decline slowly, Palliative Care Australia CEO Simon Waring called it a practical and welcome step because as he puts it, people don’t die on a timetable.

And the numbers back this up. New government figures released in May show more Australians are getting palliative care than ever. Care in hospitals is up 46% in under 10 years, and for people who make it into a specialist program, care starts fast. 92% of people begin treatment within two days of being ready.

The Catch: Funding Pulled in Tasmania

Here’s the catch. Care Australia says more than 450 Australians die every single day from an illness that could have been eased by this kind of care.

In June, the Tasmanian government revealed the federal government had cut funding to a program that was actually delivering it. It sent nurses into aged care homes to help people die with dignity. More than 4,000 people had used it. Almost all of them, 98%, got to die exactly where they wanted, usually in their own aged care home. Tasmanian’s Health Minister, Bridget Archer, called the decision extremely disappointing, and so do we.

Within days, the nurses’ union said families were already feeling it. Only the sickest patients were still being seen. More than 1,300 Tasmanians a year relied on this program. When the Federal Health Minister Mark Butler was asked on the radio what responsibilities he had taken, he pointed to the new Support at Home program replacing it, not to the people who in the meantime are falling through the gap, while that new system is still being built.

The Rural Gap and Why It Matters

And the further you get from the city, the worse this gets. Rural doctors warned this year that more than 80% of specialist palliative care doctors work in major cities. The people who train them say the whole system was never built to reach the bush. As Australia gets older, the gap is only going to widen.

Here’s why we think this is the story that matters most. A right written into law means nothing without funding behind it, and every time real care for the dying disappears,

So tell us, do you think end of life care in Australia is getting the funding it deserves? Comment below, we want to know.

And if this shocks or frustrates you, please do something about it. It is as easy as contacting your local MP or the Federal Health Minister’s office and tell them funding for aged care palliative programs need to come back.

If you want us to keep digging into stories like this every week, hit subscribe. It genuinely helps more Australians see the truth. We’ll see you next week.

Sources:

• Palliative Care Australia — Budget: A welcome step towards fairer end-of-life care

• AIHW — More Australians receiving palliative care as services and spending grows

• Palliative Care Australia — National Palliative Care Week 2026

• Tasmanian Government — Federal health cuts to impact palliative aged care support

• The Examiner — Union claims vulnerable Tasmanians won’t be able to access comfortable death

• Department of Health — Radio interview with Minister Butler, ABC Radio Hobart

• Noosa Today — Dying close to home

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

Jodie Clarkson was given six months to live. Ten years later she’s taking her son skydiving for his eighteenth birthday! Jodie was diagnosed with a brain tumour in Alice Springs. Today she runs three kilometres most mornings. She has had 70 days of chemotherapy, 33 rounds of radiation, two brain surgeries — and a decade of palliative care. She says it plainly: palliative care didn’t just manage her pain, it gave her life back to her. A recent article by Stephen Lunn in The Australian uses Jodie’s story as its opening and its title — and then spends the rest of the piece subtly arguing for something her own story disproves.

The article says people can find ‘a good death’ through palliative care - or through voluntary assisted dying. But those are not two paths to the same place. The article even admits this itself without realising it; saying palliative care “neither accelerates nor postpones death.” Whereas assisted suicide does one specific thing — it ends life, deliberately. Only one of these choices accompanies the person in their journey. The other choice ends it. Those are not two flavours of the same good death. They are opposites.

But the article doesn’t treat them as opposites. It quotes a palliative specialist and the CEO of Go Gentle Australia — the country’s leading pro-euthanasia advocacy group- hardly an unbiased source. She says that euthanasia and palliative care are “not mutually exclusive” and “work side by side.” The only truth here is in the sense that a person can technically receive both. But that suggests that expanding Euthenasia access costs nothing — that a stretched health system can just keep doing both equally well. The article never asks the obvious question: when resources, staff, and referral pathways are already rationed, what actually gets prioritised? I think you can guess the answer.

The Numbers That Should Be the Headline

The most surprising statistic in this entire piece is glossed over. Only 38 per cent of Australians who’d benefit from specialist palliative care actually get it. Cancer patients get access 68 per cent of the time. People dying with dementia — now Australia’s leading cause of death — only 16 per cent. Dr Peter Allcroft, board chair of Palliative Care Australia says it outright — financial pressure on hospitals “filters through to specialist palliative care services, who are then forced to ration access to only the most needy.”

So here’s the system this article describes: a form of care proven to give people like Jodie a decade of life is chronically underfunded, rationed, and arriving too late for almost everyone who needs it. And the article’s response to that scandal isn’t outrage. It’s to pivot — towards expanding eligibility for more access to euthanasia. The option that doesn’t need years of infrastructure, doesn’t need a multidisciplinary team, doesn’t need home visits and after-hours support. Just a diagnosis and a completed form.

That’s not two systems developing in parallel. That’s one system being neglected while the other gets easier to access. The concern is why should healthcare workers in future strive for better solutions and support when it is far easier to administer Euthanasia if it is seen as just as good an option to end a patient’s life?

Questioning the Safeguards and Finding What Jodie Chose

Euthenasia currently requires ongoing decision-making capacity. The article then spends a paragraph asking why dementia patients shouldn’t get it anyway. That requirement exists for an obvious reason — someone needs to be able to confirm, all the way through, that this is still what they want. The moment that requirement is loosened, you no longer know if the person in front of you actually wants to die today, or if an earlier version of them once said yes to something they can no longer meaningfully consent to.

The article surfaces this exact tension — capacity is required, dementia removes capacity — and then moves straight past it into a poll showing 80 per cent public support for expansion anyway. It never resolves the contradiction. It just lets the popularity of the idea stand in for an answer. This is the pattern that should worry every Australian, regardless of where you land on euthanasia in principle: the safeguards that made this legal in the first place are already being treated as obstacles to work around.

Here’s the part of the story the article buries at the very end — and it might be the most telling part of all. Jodie lives in the Northern Territory, where Euthenasia still isn’t legal. A bill is coming later this year. And here’s what she says about it: even once it’s an option, she probably won’t use it. She wants to be around for her son. She trusts her palliative care team to get her comfortably to the end. That’s not a woman choosing between two equal doors. That’s a woman who was given real, sustained, well-resourced care — and it gave her ten years she was never supposed to get. It gave her a decade to watch her son grow up.

And in her own words, what got her through it wasn’t a system, a policy, or a form. It was her. She said “I’ve run throughout my treatment, about three Ks a day. If I do that I can keep my emotions and logic in check, because the biggest battle is in your head.” That’s the good death this article should have been about. Not a choice between dying sooner or dying later — but a woman equipped, supported, and given enough time to fight through the worst of it and come out the other side stronger than anyone would have expected. We don’t need more debate about who qualifies for an earlier death. We need what gave Jodie her decade: properly funded palliative care, available early, available everywhere — not rationed to whoever’s diagnosis or postcode happens to make the cut. If Australia gets that right, there will be more people like Jodie Clarkson. People who are given less than six months — and then with the support of palliative care, get to live out the end of their lives with the dignity they deserve. That’s worth fighting for.

Sources:

• The Australian — How one woman’s decade-long journey with palliative care redefines ‘a good death’

• ABC News — Brain cancer patient Jodie Clarkson takes on West Macs Monster trail run after given six months to live

• Palliative Care Australia — Profile: Jodie Clarkson

• Palliative Care Australia — Profile: Dr Peter David Allcroft

• Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) — Media Release: Dementia Australia’s leading cause of death

• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) — Palliative care services for older people receiving aged care (Summary)

• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) — Report PDF: Specialist palliative care use for older people receiving aged care

• NSW Health — Voluntary Assisted Dying Board Annual Report 2024–2025

• Go Gentle Australia — Homepage

• Go Gentle Australia — Governance & Leadership Team

• Go Gentle Australia — Media: Demand for VAD in NSW continues to grow

• Go Gentle Australia — Publication: 2026 State of VAD Report

• Go Gentle Australia / NationBuilder — Report PDF: State of VAD Report 2026 Digital Edition

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

At least when the abortion lobby made its push to legalise the slaughter of children in the womb, they had they self-awareness to admit its tragedy. Their mantra used to be: safe, legal and rare. Today it’s: shout your abortion. So even they eventually revealed themselves for what they are: held bent on the destruction of life.

But Dying With Dignity didn’t even bother with the pretence. They just came out and said what they believe: euthanasia numbers are up and that is a good thing. In their autumn newsletter, the organisation highlights the fact that demand for euthanasia continues to grow across Australia without the slightest regard for the human tragedy that lies just below the statistics.

Even if you are an advocate for euthanasia, you would think common decency would oblige you to admit that people ending their lives prematurely is no happy thing. Families and individuals in these situations are not in a good place- regardless of the decisions they make. And although we completely disagree with the option, we feel empathy with people in these circumstances. Not so for Dying With Dignity. They wish to celebrate what is an undeniable tragedy.

When you value human life so little as to think the best way to serve someone is to end them, you clearly have lost your moral compass. Dying with Dignity unwittingly admits that outright. The disregard for the tragedy behind every real situation is glossed over in the name of a rampant and reckless expansion of a right to assisted suicide.

It is clear to us at Right to Life that the euthanasia lobby is coming for safeguards and is coming for conscientious objection. Dementia or Alzheimer’s will be no longer be reasons to object. Your own beliefs certainly won’t be either. This is a lobby that fails to recognise the tragedy and thus will not be satisfied until euthanasia is not just the most extreme answer to heartbreak - it will be the automatic solution. No compromises. No safeguards. No conscientious objection.

The battle to overturn the tragedy of legalised assisted suicide has only just begun.

Sources:

• Dying With Dignity NSW - Website

• Dying With Dignity NSW - Autumn 2026 Newsletter

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

Recently we had the opportunity to speak with Anne Sherston from the Human Life Protection Society. We spoke about their work in Tasmania and their fight for the dignity of life from conception to natural death. We discussed the dangers of euthanasia, which is becoming more of an issue right across Australia. We wanted to bring you this conversation directly, showing you what she’s seeing on the ground, and what it takes to keep advocating for life year after year.

We asked Anne how she got started, and how long the organisation has been around for.

“I’ve only been with the Human Life Protection Society for three years,” Anne told us. “However, the organisation started in 1972, so they’ve been running for 54 years. They started with three doctors that founded it — founded the organisation — and two of them were gynaecologists, obstetricians, and one was a doctor of philosophy. When a young mum would come into their surgery and talk about abortion, and it was way before ultrasounds were about, but somehow they had these cameras — did the same job — and they would show the young mums a video of their unborn child. And it would change their minds.”

Sources:

• Human Life Protection Society — Honouring the Founders of HLPS

• Human Life Protection Society — About

Euthanasia’s False Compassion, Explained

Tasmania, like every state and territory in Australia, now has voluntary assisted dying laws in place. Tasmania’s own legislation is currently undergoing its first statutory review, with an expert panel due to report back later in 2026. We asked Anne how she responds to the argument that assisted suicide is an act of protecting someone’s dignity.

“I believe, and I truly believe, that it is just false compassion at the expense of truth,” Anne said. “Because you’ve got people like Neil Denneher, who lived for 34 years with MND, and then you’ve got Magda — she was diagnosed with cancer, I think it was 12 months ago, and now is in full remission. And I can go on with so many other examples. For people to encourage another person — a sick person — to give up hope is really short-changing that person, because like Neil Denneher was able to enjoy his family and watch his family grow. So people miss out on so much by giving up so quickly.”

We also asked Anne about a proposal she’s raised concerns over — removing the timeline requirement for accessing voluntary assisted dying — and why she believes that would be such a risk.

“If you can imagine putting yourself in that situation, you’ve just been given a terminally ill diagnosis by your doctor,” Anne said. “You, and anybody else in that situation, would be in total shock. So to go immediately to ‘yes, I want to access VAD’ is just like a knee-jerk reaction, when the person hasn’t even been given the chance to explore what treatments there might be to help them live longer, heal them maybe. I’ve got a lot of family members that have been put in that situation. My uncle is 89 now — he’ll be 90 in December — and about five or six years ago he was given an aggressive diagnosis of cancer, and he’s still alive.”

We asked what kind of support Anne believes should be offered before the conversation around assisted dying even begins.

“If they’ve gone through all the options with their doctor as far as what treatments are out there for their situation, and they’re still not coping, maybe ask their doctor where they could get counselling in that area,” Anne said. “There would have to be counsellors out there that would be specific for different causes. I mean, of course, contact us and we could possibly direct them in the right direction as well. The doctor would probably have better access to the support people in that person’s area.”

Anne’s point isn’t that suffering isn’t real. It’s that a diagnosis shouldn’t be the end of the conversation. It should be the start of one.

Sources:

• Tasmanian Department of Health — Voluntary Assisted Dying Independent Review — https://www.health.tas.gov.au/voluntary-assisted-dying-independent-review

• Premier of Tasmania — Experts appointed to assess voluntary assisted dying laws (Feb 2026) — https://www.premier.tas.gov.au/latest-news/2026/february/experts-appointed-to-assess-voluntary-assisted-dying-laws

• The Conversation — VAD isn’t available to all Australians, in 2026 this may change (Qld review to examine eligibility) — https://theconversation.com/voluntary-assisted-dying-isnt-available-to-all-australians-in-2026-this-may-finally-change-269098

Ageing Advocates, Silent Churches, Open Doors

We also asked Anne about capacity — who’s doing this work day to day, and what stands in the way of it growing.

“We’ve got a membership of 76,” Anne said. “They’re all older than me, and I’m 67, so they’re all in their 80s and reaching their 90s. They’re tired, and they can’t physically get out there and do the legwork. So we do need younger people on board. The members are quite good in feeding us information that comes across their desks — issues that are being raised — and then we do the legwork.”

We asked what the single greatest challenge has been in getting the message heard.

“The churches, surprisingly enough,” Anne said. “I will email our newsletter and different notices to all the different denominations in Tasmania, and we don’t get one answer. And it is so hard to believe, when we’re all supposed to be pro-life. One of our committee members spoke at her parish — the morning she spoke in her church, she didn’t get one response.”

That’s a difficult thing to hear. But it speaks directly to the reason Life in 5 exists — to make sure this conversation doesn’t stay quiet. Assisted suicide is not going away. It’s expanding. The safeguards we were promised are already under review. The eligibility criteria are already being reconsidered. The doctors who started the Human Life Protection Society back in 1972 didn’t wait for someone else to act. Anne didn’t either. Now the question is: will you? If you would like to support the Human Life Protection Society, you can reach them through their website.

Source:

• Human Life Protection Society

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

Some of Australia’s largest aged care providers deserve recognition for standing firm in the face of mounting pressure from the euthanasia lobby. Recent criticism directed at providers that refuse to offer or actively promote euthanasia reveals an increasingly aggressive campaign to remove protections from the elderly.

Organisations such as Calvary Health Care and Mercy Health have openly stated that they do not provide euthanasia because of their deeply held moral convictions. Rather than apologising for these beliefs, they have defended them with admirable integrity. Their position reminds Australians that genuine compassion does not require intentionally ending a person’s life, but instead providing dignity and loving care until natural death.

The campaign against these providers is troubling because it seeks to portray conscientious objection as somehow incompatible with quality aged care. Not only does the pro-euthanasia lobby wish expand access, it wishes to remove dissent. They say they fight for freedom of choice, yet they oppose the choice of those who disagree with them. Freedom of conscience is not an inconvenience to be tolerated only when it suits what is fashionable. It is a fundamental liberty that deserves protection.

Many Australians deliberately choose faith-based or pro-life aged care providers precisely because they know those organisations will never intentionally participate in ending the lives of vulnerable residents. Forcing such institutions to abandon their founding is a key platform of the euthanasia lobby.

Elderly Australians should never feel that they have become a burden or that death is a solution. Our response should be greater investment in palliative care, pain management, family support and compassionate accompaniment through life’s final chapter.

The courage shown by these aged care providers sends an important message: caring for the elderly means affirming their inherent worth, not measuring their value by their use. The pressure to normalise euthanasia across the healthcare system must be resisted. And those who resist it must be supported.

Australia needs all of its institutions prepared to defend life with conviction, even when doing so invites criticism. Their example reminds us that true compassion is found not in hastening death, but in faithfully caring for those who need us most.

Source:

The Medical Republic: Aged care providers defend anti-VAD stance

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

When the secular media reports on moral issues- its bias is never more openly exposed. A recent story by the ABC on euthanasia is full of emotion and short on analysis. It is written to overwhelm the senses and anaesthesia the intellect. In short, its message to all of you is simple: shut up.

The story advocates for changes to Queensland’s voluntary assisted dying laws for people with dementia. It tells the story of one family who watched a loved one decline through aggressive dementia and who now seeks legislative reform to allow euthanasia through advance directives.

Their grief is real, and their pain deserves compassion. Yet compassion should never replace the common good. One person’s pain- without doubt real- is no basis to change the laws with which everyone has to live. Emotion is no guide to good law.

The ABC article has one intention: shepherd you to its forgone conclusion. This is not journalism; it is emotional manipulation.

The article is without doubt distressing. The situation it describes is common to families who have to suffer through dementia. The story is not a lie- but it is only half the truth. After having presented you with a check list of terrible personal sufferings written not so much to persuade but as a challenge: let him without heart cast the first doubt. You must not doubt the wisdom of allowing people with no capacity for choice to be euthanised out of (our?) their misery.

This article begins in emotion and ends in activism.

But the real test the article fails is: how does one consent when there is no capacity for it? People can be pressured. Directives can be ambiguous. Our minds can change. But none of the obvious considerations are allowed when your trajectory is pre-determined.

The most troubling omission in this ‘news story’ is the absence of ethical integrity: how can society justify intentionally ending the life of someone who is no longer capable of giving present consent? Dementia fundamentally changes a person’s ability to communicate wishes, assess circumstances and either confirm or withdraw consent. An advance directive may reflect what someone anticipated years earlier, but it cannot answer whether that same person today, still wishes to die. Not only is present consent removed from the equation, the ‘consent’ of others must necessarily be introduced to take its place.

And given the present housing crisis- there is no mystery why many ‘close’ relatives may wish to hasten the ‘inevitable’.

The ABC has crossed a line. But it is nothing in comparison with line we crossed and the pandora’s box we opened when we allowed society to kill the most vulnerable.

Source:

ABC News: Family urges Voluntary Assisted Dying law reform to give dementia patients right to die

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

South Australia’s parliament has rejected legislation that would have imposed certain new restrictions on abortions after 25 weeks of pregnancy. For many Australians this was simply another conscience vote. For those committed to the pro-life cause, it raises a profound moral and political question: What should lawmakers do when they cannot secure complete protection for unborn children?

Is it morally acceptable to support a law that saves some lives, even if it still permits other abortions? That question lies at the heart of the recent proposal to change South Australia’s abortion legislation. And it is one that pro-lifers need to address.

The legislation was introduced by Family First MLC Sarah Game. It sought to amend South Australia’s abortion laws by prohibiting abortions after 25 weeks except in certain defined circumstances. This was not the first such attempt.

In fact, it was the third effort in just two years to tighten South Australia’s abortion regime, which was liberalised in 2021. The bill passed the Legislative Council by the narrowest of margins – ten votes to nine – before proceeding to the House of Assembly, where it was defeated decisively, thirty-six votes to nine. Sarah Game has already indicated she may return with another proposal in the future.

Political Alignments and Parliamentary Voting

The supporters of the legislation came from a variety of political backgrounds. Sarah Game herself argued that late-term abortions involve viable unborn children and that society has a moral obligation to offer them greater protection. Members of One Nation supported the bill, consistent with the party’s increasingly outspoken pro-life stance.

National political figures associated with the movement, including Barnaby Joyce, have recently appeared at pro-life rallies calling for greater legal protection of unborn children and warning politicians against treating abortion as a settled issue. Some Liberal and Labor MPs also voted in favour, demonstrating that abortion remains one of the few issues in Australian politics that regularly crosses party lines. For supporters, the bill represented an incremental but meaningful step towards protecting unborn life.

Opposition to the bill was broad and ultimately overwhelming. The Greens opposed it outright. Most Labor MPs voted against it, as did many Liberals. Premier Peter Malinauskas, who voted in favour of the bill, later criticised the renewed focus on abortion legislation and argued parliament should direct its attention elsewhere.

The Moral Debate and Future Advocacy

But from a pro-life perspective, a deeper question arises that cannot be settled by a political vote. The intention of the South Australian bill, although aimed at restricting the upper limit of late term abortions to 25 weeks, did allow for abortion up until that point. It also allowed abortions after that date in the cases of foetal abnormalities and in case of the health of the mother. Although a better law than the one already in operation in South Australia, the new law would have still been an incredibly permissive abortion law. Even by world standards.

The question for pro-lifers is how does one navigate the moral evil of abortion, given that a law outlawing abortion in any Australian juristiction at this point would seem impossible to pass. The question with which most pro-lifers struggle is: what are the limits within which we can effectively operate to stop abortion without sacrificing our principles? Despite the intention of those in favour of the South Australian bill, this was still a law that allowed abortions up until 25 weeks. It was still a morally problematic amendment as it left in place a deeply morally flawed law.

Another way of asking the question at the heart of this debate is: how much harm can be permitted even when one is acting with the clear intention of trying to reduce harm? The argument is one that pro-lifers need to have in order to come to some settled understanding of how to prosecute our cause. From this perspective, many pro-life advocates would argue that it is morally permissible to support Sarah Game’s bill, despite its exceptions. Others argue that any law allowing abortion is morally wrong and is therefore unacceptable.

Despite the noble intentions of those arguing in support of the bill, laws have an effect that is far greater than the individual intentions of legislators. And this cannot be overlooked, even when there is much enthusiasm for a cause. Many in the pro-life cause worry that laws containing exceptions or laws that continue to permit moral evil, will ultimately reinforce the idea that certain unborn lives are less worthy of protection than others. If a law objectively says some children deserve legal protection but others do not, despite the subjective intentions of legislators, will that not ultimately entrench the very evil that the pro-life movement seeks to overthrow?

It is difficult to gauge accurately within the pro-life movement, where the mainstream opinion is to be found on this issue. It seems that for many pro-lifers, any opportunity to reduce the number of abortions must be taken. For others, they argue that such opportunities are not as clear cut as we would like, as they represent their own kinds of harm that will ultimately do damage to the pro-life cause.

We at Right to Life welcome the debate and wish to contribute to making clear what are its parameters and what must be decided. We also welcome the work of those who have brought the abortion debate back into the mainstream. The South Australian bill has shown that abortion is no longer the taboo topic that our political class has made it out to be.

By making the problem of abortion mainstream- we immediately see who is aligned for a right to life and who opposes it. Across Australia, pro-life activists and politicians are becoming more organised and more willing to challenge laws that only a few years ago seemed politically settled. We are working towards making this debate the beginning of a new phase of pro-life advocacy in our country. We pray this may be the beginning of the end for abortion in Australia.

Sources

• ABC News — Abortion bill voted down in lower house

• ABC News — Bill to change abortion laws goes before SA parliament

• InDaily SA — Abortion bill passes first hurdle

• The Saturday Paper — SA bill restrict abortion defeated

• ABC News — Sarah Game SA abortion bill reaction

• ABC News — One Nation Barnaby Joyce Sydney abortion demonstration

• InDaily SA — How your MP voted on the abortion bill

• South Australian Legislation — Termination of Pregnancy Restriction on Terminations After 24 Weeks and 6 Days Amendment Bill 2026

If this episode moved you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Share

Subscribe to our Substack to receive future LIFE IN 5 episodes.

Subscribe now

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and X to stay informed.

If you want to support this work, consider making a donation and helping us continue producing content like this

Support our work

Donate

Your support helps us keep telling the truth about what’s happening — clearly, calmly, and without compromise.

Planned Parenthood is expanding access to what it calls “just-in-case” abortion pills, allowing women in Washington and Hawaii to obtain abortion medication before they are even pregnant. The new programme allows eligible patients to receive and store abortion drugs in advance, so they can use them later if they become pregnant and decide to end that pregnancy.

This latest push from Planned Parenthood is a reaction to the Dobbs generation. Ever since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there is a new generation of young men and women who refuse to accept the status quo on abortion. Pro-life advocates say that Planned Parenthood’s expansion further normalises abortion as a routine solution — desensitising people to the horrific reality of what abortion actually is. Women are left to make a life-ending decision in isolation, which also exposes them to mental and physical health risks. Planned Parenthood’s latest efforts are further evidence of its reckless disregard for human life — both of the child and its mother.

The cultural effects are not to be ignored. Abortion pills are designed to end the life of an unborn child. The irresponsible decision to make these drugs available for future use treats a potential human life as a problem to be solved rather than a life worthy of protection.

The announcement comes amid the continued fight over abortion policy following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and the ongoing debate over the availability of the abortion drug mifepristone. Medication abortions now account for a significant share of abortions in the United States, making access to these drugs a major focus of the pro-life movement.

Pro-life organisations argue that this represents another step towards misrepresenting the tragic reality of abortion, while doing little to address the underlying circumstances that lead women to consider ending their pregnancies. The fight does not end with these two states. Planned Parenthood intends to expand the programme to additional states in the future where laws permit. For now, the advance-prescription model will be limited to residents of Washington and Hawaii.

Sources

• The Guardian — Planned Parenthood advance abortion pill programme

• Planned Parenthood — Press release: Just-in-case abortion pills

• Planned Parenthood — Just-in-case health care services page

• NPR — Advance provision of abortion pills

• Live Action — Against FDA guidance: Planned Parenthood’s just-in-case drugs

The FDA Review — A Long-Overdue Look at Mifepristone’s Safety

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has launched a new safety study into the abortion drug mifepristone — a move welcomed by pro-life organisations that have long called for greater scrutiny of the medication’s risks and distribution. The review comes in the middle of ongoing legal and political battles over abortion access nationwide.

The FDA says the study will examine safety data surrounding mifepristone, the first drug used in a medication abortion regimen. Administration officials say the review will use existing federal drug-safety monitoring systems and could take approximately six months to complete, with preliminary findings potentially available as early as this summer.

Mifepristone now accounts for the majority of abortions performed in the United States and can currently be prescribed through telehealth appointments and delivered by mail in many jurisdictions. Pro-life advocates argue that mail-order abortion pills have been available without adequate investigation into their safety for women. We know the drug is lethal for the child — but advocates for the drug do not seem concerned for the safety of women either. Part of the campaign to end the use of these drugs is for information regarding their safety to be made public.

The FDA review represents an important opportunity to assess whether safeguards surrounding the drug remain sufficient — particularly as abortion pills are increasingly obtained without an in-person medical visit. The FDA has also indicated the debate should include consideration of both maternal health and the lives of unborn children affected by chemical abortions.

Abortion-rights groups, however, are pushing back against the review — which is telling, given that they claim to have the best interests of women at heart. Any organisation that speaks of women’s health but stands in the way of a review that seeks information about women’s health is betraying its real motivation: unlimited access to abortion. Their concern is access to abortion, not the health of the women they claim to represent. The FDA has not indicated whether the study will result in regulatory changes, but the findings are expected to play a significant role in future court cases, policy debates, and federal decisions regarding abortion-pill access.

Sources:

• The Wall Street Journal — FDA launches study of abortion pill safety

• CBS News — FDA launches safety study for abortion pill mifepristone

• The Hill — FDA review of mifepristone abortion drug safety

• Fierce Pharma — Pro-life pressure as FDA investigates abortion pill

• Live Action — FDA launches safety study for mifepristone

If this episode moved you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Share

Subscribe to our Substack to receive future LIFE IN 5 episodes.

Subscribe now

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and X to stay informed.

If you want to support this work, consider making a donation and helping us continue producing content like this

Support our work

Donate

Your support helps us keep telling the truth about what’s happening — clearly, calmly, and without compromise.

The article, titled “Whose Choice Is It? The Unseen Side of Australia’s Abortion Debate,” presents itself as a compassionate exploration of migrant women’s experiences. But a closer look reveals something very different: a piece that uses the genuine suffering of vulnerable women to push a pro-abortion access agenda. It was published at a politically convenient moment, while burying the contradictions at the heart of its own argument.

Start with the headline: Whose choice is it? This framing tells you exactly where this article is going before you read a single word.

Then comes the article’s most glaring logical flaw. It opens by highlighting migrant women being coerced and pressured into terminations they don’t want, and then uses that suffering to argue that abortion should be easier to access. But those are two completely different problems. Protecting a woman from family coercion requires stronger support, not what is presented here. That is not journalism, that is advocacy.

Then look at who they chose to speak to. Every single source in the article is a pro-abortion access advocate: a psychotherapist, a multicultural health CEO, a Family Planning Australian officer, and a Greens MP. Not one pro-life voice, not one migrant woman, not one independent academic, and not one alternative voice from within the communities the article claims to represent. The only people questioning the status quo are framed as political agitators, given no meaningful right of reply.

SBS is a publicly funded broadcaster bound by its own Code of Practice to report with balance and impartiality. This article did not meet that standard, and it was published just days after a significant pro-life rally.

When a media outlet claims to give voice to the voiceless, but only selects voices that confirm what it already believes, that is not inclusion. That is bias with better branding.

Sources

• SBS News Article: Migrant women ‘unheard’ in abortion debate

• SBS Policy Document: SBS Code of Practice (2026)

• ABC News: Barnaby Joyce joins One Nation, anti-abortion activists at Sydney demonstration

• Nine News: Barnaby Joyce attends anti-abortion rally in Sydney over NSW bill

• The Guardian: Barnaby Joyce rallies anti-abortion activists as they target Nationals MPs in NSW vote

• LifeNews: 1,500 People Rally in Australia Against Sex-Selection Abortions

• City Hub: Barnaby Joyce joins abortion activists

• IFAM News: NSW Parliament to debate bill banning sex-selective abortion

• Daily Declaration: Sydney rallies against sex-selective abortion

If this episode moved you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Share

Subscribe to our Substack to receive future LIFE IN 5 episodes.

Subscribe now

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and X to stay informed.

If you want to support this work, consider making a donation and helping us continue producing content like this

Support our work

Donate

Your support helps us keep telling the truth about what’s happening — clearly, calmly, and without compromise.

Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program was originally presented as a narrowly tailored option for terminally ill adults experiencing unbearable suffering. Yet a decade after legalisation, observers note that the program has expanded far beyond its original intent, raising profound ethical concerns about the value society places on vulnerable human lives. Recent discussions surrounding eligibility for individuals suffering from mental illness alone have intensified those concerns.

From a pro-life perspective, the central issue is not autonomy but human dignity. Every person possesses inherent worth regardless of age, disability, illness, or mental health condition. A compassionate society should respond to suffering with care, treatment, and support—not by facilitating death.

Critics of Canada’s current trajectory argue that MAiD has moved from being an exceptional measure for rare cases to an increasingly normalised part of healthcare. Reports indicate that assisted deaths now account for a significant share of deaths in Canada, while eligibility criteria have expanded beyond those facing imminent death.

An article published in the National Centre for Public Policy research reports the following statistics.

Here is the annual Canadian death toll from assisted suicide and euthanasia:

That’s 76,475 deaths in the first eight years of legalisation.

Legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia are now the fifth leading cause of death in Canada.

For perspective, over twenty years in the Netherlands, deaths from assisted suicide and euthanasia have increased from 1,000 to 9,000. Over eight years in Canada, deaths have risen from 1,000 to 16,499 — a 16-fold increase.

The prospect of extending assisted death to those whose sole underlying condition is mental illness is especially troubling. Mental health conditions are often complex, fluctuating, and difficult to predict. Many individuals who experience profound despair later recover, especially when provided with effective treatment, social support, and hope. Even some experts have warned that expanding MAiD in this area could create dangerous societal signals regarding suicide and mental suffering.

A truly humane healthcare system must focus on improving access to palliative care, disability services, mental health treatment, and community support. When vulnerable people feel like burdens or believe death is their best option, society has failed to meet its responsibility to protect and care for them.

Source

• National Center for Public Policy Research: Canada: A Society Gone Mad for Medicalized Killing

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

Source

• New York Post - NY releases rules for doctor-assisted patient suicide — as critics cry of ‘new and frightening era’

ALBANY, N.Y.

New York health officials have unveiled regulations for the state’s controversial Medical Aid in Dying law, a measure that will allow certain terminally ill patients to obtain life-ending medication beginning August 5.

Pro-life advocates, religious leaders, and disability-rights activists warn that the policy represents a dangerous cultural shift that threatens society’s commitment to protecting vulnerable human life.

The regulations establish procedures for patients diagnosed with terminal illnesses and a prognosis of six months or less to live. Under the rules, patients must make multiple requests, undergo medical evaluations, observe a waiting period, and ultimately self-administer the prescribed lethal drugs.

However, opponents contend that no amount of regulation can eliminate the fundamental ethical concerns surrounding physician-assisted suicide. Critics argue that the law changes the role of medicine from healing and caring for patients to facilitating death. They also warn that legalizing assisted suicide sends a troubling message that some lives—particularly those affected by illness, disability, or advanced age—will be viewed as less worthy of protection.

Religious leaders have been among the most vocal opponents. Catholic officials have described the law as part of a growing “throwaway culture” that risks normalizing suicide and undermining respect for human dignity. They argue that society should instead invest in hospice care, palliative medicine, pain management, and emotional support for patients and families facing terminal illness.

Many pro-life advocates also point to developments in Canada, where assisted-dying laws have expanded significantly since their initial adoption. Critics argue that New York will follow a similar path, with eligibility requirements gradually broadened over time and safeguards eroded. They cite concerns raised by Canadian patients and disability advocates who say vulnerable individuals have at times felt pressure to consider assisted death due to inadequate healthcare, housing, or social support.

Although supporters insist New York’s law contains strict guardrails—including physician reviews, mental-health evaluations, waiting periods, and documentation requirements—experience tells us that where these laws start is not where they end up. Critics of the proposals rightly remain unconvinced. They argue that the state’s focus should be on helping people live with dignity rather than providing a legal pathway to end their lives.

As the August implementation date approaches, the debate over physician-assisted suicide is expected to intensify. For pro-life organizations, the issue extends beyond public policy and into the core question of whether a civilized society should ever sanction the intentional ending of human life. They warn that New York is entering a new and uncertain chapter—one that could have lasting consequences for medicine, ethics, and the value placed on every human life.

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

In political philosophy, there is a phenomenon known as the “ratchet effect.” Once a controversial piece of social legislation is passed, the goalposts are rarely left in place. Instead, they click forward, locking in new cultural realities while immediately preparing for the next push.

Nowhere is this truer today than in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).

In November 2025, the ACT’s Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) laws officially came into effect. When the framework was originally debated and ultimately passed by the Legislative Assembly, the public was given a solemn assurance: the law would contain ironclad safeguards. Chief among them was the unyielding requirement that an individual must possess decision-making capacity at every single stage of the process—including the final moment when the lethal substance is administered. It was framed as the ultimate line of defence against coercion, mistake, or a sudden change of heart.

Yet, before the system has even had a chance to mature, the ACT Government has announced it is spending $3.1 million over the next two years to review and expand the boundaries of the framework. The headline act of this funding? The creation of a “citizens’ jury” designed to examine whether patients who lose decision-making capacity after final approval should still have their lives ended.

Manufacturing “Social License”

According to reporting first highlighted by Canberra CityNews and detailed in joint ministerial releases for the 2026–27 ACT Budget, the government is leaning heavily on the concept of citizen-led consensus to navigate this deeply fraught ethical terrain.

In a joint statement, ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith defended the multi-million dollar allocation by framing it as a response to public demand:

“We know there is ongoing community interest in the question of access to voluntary assisted dying for people who lose capacity at the end of their life. No other Australian jurisdiction has yet acted on this issue and our priority is to get this right. Any reform must have clear social license and appropriate safeguards.”

Chief Minister Andrew Barr echoed this sentiment, presenting the initiative as a natural evolution of “compassionate, patient‑centred end‑of‑life care that respects individual dignity.” He insisted that by utilising a citizens’ jury alongside clinical and legal experts, the government is ensuring future policies are “shaped by the values, experiences and expectations of our community.”

But to critics and pro-life advocates, this looks less like genuine community consultation and more like the strategic manufacturing of consent. Attorney-General Tara Cheyne acknowledged the stakes, admitting that this is a “complex and sensitive issue that raises important human rights, legal and ethical questions.” Yet the fundamental question remains: if the requirement for ongoing, active consent was the cornerstone safeguard that allowed the bill to pass in the first place, why is it being targeted for removal so soon?

The Core Ethical Faultline

The review targets one of the most agonising and legally volatile questions in end-of-life law: whether a person’s prior consent can remain valid once they are no longer mentally present to confirm, deny, or alter that decision.

When a person suffers from rapid cognitive decline, advanced dementia, or late-stage terminal illness, their perception of suffering, their relationship with their surroundings, and their internal state can shift dramatically. Pro-life advocates argue that allowing an advance care directive or a substitute decision-maker to trigger a lethal injection strips the vulnerable of their final, silent veto right.

The promise made to the electorate was that VAD would always be an active, knowing, and voluntary choice made by the individual right up until their final breath. By exploring ways to bypass the capacity requirement, euthanasia advocates are seeking to dismantle the very guardrail that made the law palatable to a skeptical public.

An Insatiable Appetite for Expansion

What makes this development particularly telling is that for radical advocacy groups, even a multi-million dollar government push to expand the law is not enough.

Responding to the budget announcement, Sam Delaney, the President of Dying with Dignity ACT, made it clear that the lobby group expects far more, stating:

“While we welcome any move to widen access to voluntary assisted dying in the ACT, this initiative is far too narrow in scope.”

This exposure of intent is vital for understanding the broader political landscape. It reveals that safeguards are rarely treated as permanent fixtures by advocates; instead, they are treated as temporary bureaucratic compromises necessary to get a foot in the door. Once the door is open, those very compromises are rebranded as “cruel, discriminatory barriers to access.”

A Nationwide Shift

The ACT is not an isolated case. Across Australia, the boundaries surrounding assisted dying are being quietly but consistently redrawn:

• In Victoria: Lawmakers passed sweeping amendments to the state’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017. These updates remove strict historical bans that prohibited doctors from proactively initiating discussions about VAD with their patients. What was once legally enforced clinical neutrality is being replaced by a green light for medical professionals to raise the option of death themselves.

• In New South Wales: The state’s VAD Board is currently undertaking its own legislative review, focusing heavily on expanding “patient choice” and lowering what advocacy groups term “procedural barriers.”

From Melbourne to Canberra to Sydney, the momentum is entirely unidirectional. Nowhere in Australia since the legalisation of euthanasia have stricter requirements or tighter safeguards been added to the books. The direction of travel is unmistakable.

The Pressure on the Vulnerable

This relentless expansion comes amidst mounting international and domestic warnings about the subtle, systemic pressures these laws exert on society’s most vulnerable. When a culture normalises assisted death as a standard medical line-item, the “right to die” can imperceptibly morph into a “duty to die.”

The elderly, the disabled, the chronically ill, and the socially isolated face unique psychological vulnerabilities. In an era of strained healthcare budgets and intense cost-of-living crises, the fear of becoming a financial, physical, or emotional burden on family members is a powerful, silent coercive force. When the ultimate safeguard—the requirement that a person must be actively capable of giving informed consent at the moment of death—is removed, the line between an autonomous choice and a tragic capitulation becomes terrifyingly blurred.

The Last Word

ACT ministers continue to offer reassurances, insisting that no formal legislative changes have been drafted yet. They ask the public to trust the process of the citizens’ jury.

But for those watching the rapid evolution of end-of-life laws across the country, those assurances ring hollow. We have seen this playbook before. The safeguards of yesterday are the “barriers” of today, and the radical proposals of today are the legislated realities of tomorrow.

The march toward death on demand continues unabated. The only question left is how far the ratchet will turn before the community decides it has gone too far.

What do you think? Is a “citizens’ jury” a fair way to evaluate such a sensitive ethical issue, or is it a political tool used to engineer policy creep? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and consider subscribing to stay updated on this unfolding story.

Sources

• ACT Government Media Release: “ACT Budget 26-27: Citizens’ jury to support the next stage of Voluntary Assisted Dying policy”

• Canberra CityNews: “ACT to spend $3.1m on voluntary assisted dying review”

• CityNews Queanbeyan: “Make a decision, there’s enough information”

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

There is an ancient, unwritten covenant between parent and child: no matter how dark the world becomes, the parent stands as a fortress of hope. When a child slips toward the edge of an abyss, the parental instinct is supposed to pull them back with fierce, uncompromising defiance.

But in the Netherlands, a harrowing counter-narrative is taking root. It is a story where love looks like surrender, and empathy looks like an endorsement of death.

A tragic report by The Free Press, has brought to light the devastating case of Iris, a 19-year-old Dutch woman who opted to end her life through starvation—a decision made with the complete backing and validation of her parents.

Iris’s story is a terrifying window into what happens when a culture fully institutionalises medicalised death, altering the very fabric of parental duty and societal compassion.

The Road to the Hospice

Iris’s suffering was undeniably real. She battled severe depression alongside Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), a condition that caused her chronic pain and confined her to a wheelchair. When the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns compounded her agony, she attempted suicide twice at the tender age of 15.

In a healthy society, a teenager surviving two suicide attempts is met with life-affirming intervention. Instead, Iris begged her parents to support her application for a legal, state-sanctioned euthanasia injection. Rather than steering their vulnerable daughter away from the ledge, her parents chose to validate her despair.

Her mother rationalised the decision with chilling simplicity:

“I thought, if it stops her from trying to kill herself, then it’s okay.”

Her father, Omar, was not a bystander lacking medical context; he was a psychiatric nurse—a professional trained to recognise the distorted reality of severe depression. Yet, he justified his compliance through a thoroughly modern, hyper-individualistic framework:

“If I stopped her from dying, it would only be for my own ego, and not for her.”

To qualify for euthanasia under Dutch law, Iris spent three years undergoing intensive clinical treatments. Eventually, doctors stamped her depression with the label “treatment-resistant.” Paradoxically, there was tangible, objective hope on the physical front: her physical therapy was working, and she was actually beginning to walk again.

But the psychological rot of institutionalised assistance had already set in. Fed up with waiting for the euthanasia clinic’s final bureaucratic approval, Iris decided to bypass the system entirely through Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking (VSED).

Exhausted by the clinical machinery, she told her father: “I don’t want to go through another summer. I don’t want to explain my condition to yet another doctor.”

With her parents’ consent, she checked into a hospice to systematically starve herself to death. On her final night, as he held his dying daughter, Omar recalled the internal war between his paternal instincts and his societal conditioning:

“In my heart, as a father—and also as a nurse—I was thinking, I have to do something... And at the same time, I knew: No. This is what she wants.”

A Symptom of a Wider Cultural Shift

Iris’s tragic end is not an isolated anomaly. It is the logical conclusion of a system that has progressively lowered the threshold for what constitutes an “incurable” life.

Historically, euthanasia in the Netherlands was reserved for terminal physical illness. However, the boundaries have drastically blurred. According to reporting from The Guardian, the Netherlands remains one of the few places where “unbearable mental suffering” is an acceptable legal ground for assisted death.

The data reflects a staggering, institutional acceleration. A comprehensive analysis published by the Psychiatric Times notes that psychiatric euthanasia in the Netherlands was virtually nonexistent for a decade, averaging only one or two cases per year between 2002 and 2010. However, the numbers surged to 138 cases in 2023, and sky-rocketed to 219 cases—a 60 percent single-year increase.

More alarming is the demographic shift toward youth:

“Within this expansion, youth euthanasia cases are increasingly prominent. Between 2020 and 2024, the number of euthanasia cases for individuals under 30 rose from 5 to 30, a 6-fold increase... multiple sources indicate a gradual lowering of the effective threshold for granting euthanasia on psychiatric grounds.”

When the formal euthanasia pipeline bottlenecks due to waiting lists or cautious doctors, young people are increasingly turning to VSED. Clinical guidelines published in the Annals of Palliative Medicine openly acknowledge this grim reality, noting that

“many individuals seeking VSED in the Netherlands may be doing so because they have made a request for euthanasia that was declined [or delayed].”

The same medical literature explicitly warns clinicians to advise individuals under 60 against VSED because a young, resilient body will experience protracted physical distress and extreme thirst before organ failure finally sets in. Yet, Iris was permitted to walk down this grueling path at just 19 years old.

The Pathology of Affirming Despair

What we are witnessing in cases like Iris’s is the emergence of a “deadly empathy”- a cultural phenomenon where validating a person’s desire to die is treated as the ultimate form of love and respect for autonomy.

But a 19-year-old trapped in the suffocating darkness of clinical depression does not possess the fully developed brain architecture required to determine that their suffering is permanent. Depression is a master liar; it distorts cognitive processing, convinces the victim that the future holds nothing but pain, and frames death as the only logical escape.

When parents absorb this distortion and label their compliance as “selfless,” they are not practicing compassion. They are participating in a profound breakdown of parental duty.

When a society normalises death as a valid cure for psychological pain, it sends a clear, devastating message to its most vulnerable youth: We agree that your life is no longer worth fighting for. It creates a dangerous social contagion, shifting the cultural default from suicide prevention to suicide assistance.

If we want to protect our youth, we must aggressively reject this clinical surrender. We must return to a culture that provides children with a fiercely life-affirming upbringing—one that defends the absolute, intrinsic value of human life, even when the person living it cannot see that value themselves.

A suffering child doesn’t need a system that facilitates their destruction, nor do they need parents who validate their darkest thoughts. They need an unyielding fortress of hope that holds them fast until the light comes back.

Sources

• The Free Press: The Parents Who Let Their Daughter Die

• Live Action: Parents approve suicidal teen daughter’s death by starvation

• BBC News: European Euthanasia Case Profiles

• Psychiatric Times: Psychiatric Euthanasia in the Netherlands: Young People, Procedural Medicine, and the Limits of Psychiatry

• The Guardian: Dutch woman, 29, granted euthanasia approval on grounds of mental suffering

Found this valuable? Help us reach more Australians.

Share

Subscribe to Right to Life on Substack for weekly articles, analysis, and commentary:

Subscribe now

Support our work: Every donation helps us protect human life and change Australian culture.

Donate

Instagram - Facebook - X - YouTube

Many of us have been pro-life in name for years, but now is the time to take action. And it’s much easier—and more exciting—than you think. You can help make a massive difference without rewriting your whole schedule.

We are looking for passionate volunteers to join the Right to Life team. You don’t need a massive amount of free time or a specialized corporate background. Whether you have two hours a week or twenty, we have a place for you.

We need your help as:

• Video Editors (specifically for our Life in 5 series)

• Social Media Content Creators

• Writers & Graphic Designers

• Administrative Assistants

Watch our latest video above to see how you can use your laptop or phone to reach tens of thousands of Aussies for the unborn.

How to get involved: If you’re ready to speak up for the voiceless, please send your resume to office@righttolife.org.au. We can’t wait to have you on board!

Share

Subscribe now