WHOSE LIFE IS IT?

Last Monday Angie Belecciu checked into a motel on the Mornington Peninsula and sometime Monday night or early Tuesday morning she killed herself. That in itself is not a crime. But if Angie had failed she could have been charged with a crime. And so could anybody who advised her, or assisted her, or provided the illegal drug Nembutal which she used to end her painful life.

And so presumably could The Age newspaper because they knew Angie was going to kill herself. And today reporter Julia Medew chronicles Angie’s journey to –as they put it – ‘a lonely death with dignity, outside the law’.

Angie Belecciu knew a lot about suffering apart from her own.  She was a palliative care nurse who had seen others follow a long and painful and degenerative path until they died. Personally, she had suffered for 18 years with her bones eventually riddled with cancer.

And so she decided to go in her own way, in her own time. Angie arranged with another terminally ill man Don Flounders to buy Nembutal, the drug legally used to euthanase animals, in Mexico.

When Flounders and his wife Iris arrived back in Australia with the drug he went public in his campaign for voluntary euthanasia on Channel Seven. And Angie Belecciu, a critically ill 57 mother of two, had her house raided by Police.

Obviously they didn’t find the drug she used to take her own life this week.

Before she died she told The Age ‘We humans are not humane to our own species. If I was an animal it would be cruel and against the law to allow me to continue my life.’

And she was right. Last year Colleen Hartland’s Dying with Dignity legislation got another airing in the Upper House.

Her aim was simple and succinct. She said ‘If the patient is suffering profoundly and has given up the fight after considering every alternative, then let them ask for assistance to die in a way the sufferer believes is dignified, and consistent with their values.’

I said at the time: Let them pass away with dignity and pride and to their own timetable. Don’t make them flee overseas to a Swiss clinic or smuggle illegal drugs in from Mexico. Don’t make loved ones co-conspirators facing the risk of murder or manslaughter charges just for lovingly responding to one final plea.

I have long been a supporter of voluntary euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke who has risked his career, his freedom, his reputation and even his personal safety by campaigning for the ultimate civil right:  The right to take your own life.

And it is your right.  I know I have used many times the example of my own mother’s death and make no apology for that. She was only four years older than I am now when she contracted cancer. With chemo therapy she developed thrush in her throat ands could not swallow. She existed on melted ice cream as she slipped into a twilight zone.

I watched my mother waste away. In her final days she looked like a Biafran famine victim. And, as Angie Belecciu said, if she had been a dog and an RSPCA inspector had walked into that room where I sat by her bed, I would have justifiably been charged with cruelty to animals.

My mother was not living. She was existing. A morphine shunt in her side was controlling some of the pain. But I looked at her and it seriously crossed my mind that as a last act of love I should put a pillow over her face and end it.

Our laws are inhumane. Philip Nitschke is again at risk of criminal charges. So is Don Flounders.  Even The Age had to be cautious in its reports today.
It said Angie had been found yesterday morning in the motel room in her favourite, softest pajamas. And ‘It is unclear if she had been alone or not’.

I hope she wasn’t. But if the newspaper had said someone was with her another legal witch-hunt would begin.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009