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By Philip Nitschke
Darwin woman Esther Wild qualified
for, but narrowly missed, the opportunity to use
the Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally
Ill Act to die. The Kevin Andrews Bill overturned the
law and prevented her the right to die with dignity.
Esther first contacted Exit in January 1997. She
was dying of Carcenoid Syndrome, a rare
form of bowel cancer. A nurse by training, Esther
was under no illusions of the type of life
that lay ahead.
When I met Esther she was plagued
by ongoing vomiting and diarrhea. She looked frail
and emaciated and with her partner Martin Williams
Esther asked for my help to use the ROTI law. The only thing was, Esther didn’t
want to die straight away but she wanted the
option for the future.
By March, Esther’s health
had deteriorated rapidly but she thought even
if the Kevin Andrews Bill did succee, an allowance would surely be made for her
to go ahead. After all, the paperwork was long
signed.
With the assistance of Greens Senator
Bob Brown, Esther tried to gain this assurance
by writing to all Senators outlining her situation.
Only one Senator bothered to reply.
That person was Democrats' Senator Natasha Stott
Despoja.
As history tells it, the Brown
amendment was lost and the Law was overturned. In
a last desperate effort, Esther wrote to the Governor
General, Sir William Dean. But Dean was a good
Catholic. He signed the Bill at 4pm the day
before Good Friday. Rather than answering Esther’s
plea and waiting until after the Easter holiday.
With the law gone Esther had little choice but to
subject herself to the gradual process of slow
euthanasia (terminal sedation). Esther took four days to die, waking
frequently as her body seemed immune to the amount
of morphine need for her “pain”.
This long and drawn out process
was almost too much for her partner Martin who, at one point,
demanded “the bloody drugs. If you don’t
do something I’ll bloody do it”. It
took all my powers of persuasion to stop him taking
the law into his own hands
Unlike the quick, painless deaths experienced by
the four people who used the ROTI Act, Esther
had to endure a slow macabre process. There is
no comparison.
The time leading up to Esther’s
death and the overturning of the law was documented
in a 4 Corners episode by ABC journalist Murray
McLaughlin called ‘The Dying Game’.
The power of the program was significant,
and letters of dismay and anger poured in from
around the country. For the first time, Australians
realised what their Federal Parliament had done.
“How could a civilized country allow this
to happen” people asked? I still don’t
have that answer. |
