IF Queensland MPs support the introduction of euthanasia laws next month, Catholic hospitals have vowed to resist allowing doctors to enter their premises to administer end-of-life drugs.
“We will not tolerate non credentialed doctors coming on site, nor will we assist in the provision of voluntary assisted dying in any of our facilities,” chair of the Mater Group, Francis Sullivan said.
Catholic facilities provide one in five hospital and aged care beds in Queensland.
In its current form the Voluntary Assisted Dying bill empowers doctors to go into hospitals or aged care homes and administer a lethal dose without having to inform or consult the facility.
Toby Hall, group chief executive of St Vincent’s Health Australia, that runs private hospitals at Kangaroo Point and Chermside in Brisbane, labelled the proposed euthanasia laws as “a radical and dangerous undermining of patient safety”.
“It’s partly why the Queensland AMA is so strongly against the lack of protection for faith-based hospital providers,” Mr Hall said.
“The Queensland Government is forcing Catholic hospital providers – against our values and beliefs – to open up our facilities to assisted dying.
“That’s deeply unsettling and shocking to us.”
On August 20, Queensland parliament’s Health and Environment Committee recommended the VAD bill pass unchanged.
Three of the committee’s six members – all of the non-Labor MPs – tabled dissenting or reserved-decision reports.
It signals that euthanasia will spark intense parliamentary debate before a rare conscience vote is given by both major parties.
If MPs vote in favour, it would make Queensland the only state with laws that actively force hospitals and aged care homes to go against their values and beliefs and allow assisted dying on their premises.
“This is unique to Queensland. No other state that has already passed these laws – Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia or Western Australia – has included such a measure,” Mr Hall said.
Deputy Premier Steven Miles said cases where VAD doctors would be called in to faith-run facilities would be “very, very rare”.
“It is only those circumstances where it would be unfair … would cause unnecessary suffering to transfer the patient to a provider where those services can be provided,” he told The Australian.
However, Catholic Health Australia’s director of strategy and mission, Rebecca Burdick Davies said the laws would force “those who conscientiously object to assisted dying to enable it”.
“How is that a choice? How is that voluntary? No one should be forced to be an accessory to this scheme,” Ms Burdick Davies said.
“Our nurses, residents and patients have chosen to work in hospitals and aged care homes that have a unique ethic of care. Their choices should be honoured.”
In one dissenting report presented to the Health and Environment Committee, the Member for Oodgeroo, Dr Mark Robinson said that in jurisdictions around the world euthanasia had proven to be “unstoppable and irreversible” once introduced.
“Once the euthanasia genie is out of the bottle it doesn’t go back in,” Dr Robinson wrote.
“What is initially proposed as a measure to help a very small number of people, said to be in intolerable physical pain, is progressively broadened to apply to thousands of people, including those with no physical medical condition.
“Initial procedural safeguards are also relaxed. Once you lift the lid on Pandora’s box, there’s no going back.”
